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From: davidsen@steinmetz.UUCP (Davidsen)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: LINT as documentation
Message-ID: <762@steinmetz.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-May-86 16:24:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: steinmet.762
Posted: Thu May 22 16:24:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 24-May-86 17:39:01 EDT
References: <453@brl-smoke.ARPA> <2417@watmath.UUCP> <411@ccird1.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@kbsvax.UUCP (Davidsen)
Organization: GE CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 27

In article <411@ccird1.UUCP> rb@ccird1.UUCP (Rex Ballard) writes:
>This is just one more argument for lint.
>
>True, lint often burps over "trivial" little problems like
>passing a *int to a function that expects *char, among others,
>but there are some real good reasons for using lint.
>

These are *NOT* trivial problems! This is the type of things which destroys
portability. On a number of machines, the format of a data pointers is not
at all the same, and passing a wrong type pointer may break the program
completely. These machines include Honeywell (I bet you care), DG, and
Cray. I was part of X3J11 for two years and had it beaten into me why we
needed the "void *" pointer and forced casts. If you think these are
trivial problems you perhaps lack experience with a wide enough variety
of machines. Portability is the *best* reason for lint. There are better
debugging tools available these days.
-- 
	-bill davidsen

  ihnp4!seismo!rochester!steinmetz!--\
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"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"