Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!hc!lanl!beta!jlg
From: jlg@beta.lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran
Subject: Re: fortran lint?
Message-ID: <20314@beta.lanl.gov>
Date: 16 Jun 88 13:12:27 GMT
References: <3835@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> <20089@beta.UUCP> <1059@ima.ISC.COM> <10947@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 27

In article <10947@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, jerry@violet.berkeley.edu ( Jerry Berkman ) writes:
> [...]
> IBM's VS FORTRAN compiler can check.  E.g.:
> 	FORTVS UTILS ( ICA(UPDATE(UTILDEC)))
> [...]
> 	FORTVS PROG  ( ICA(USE(UTILDEC)))
> [...]
> The "-C" option of lint creates "lint libraries" so that separately
> compiled C procedure calls can be checked against C procedure declarations
> in the absence of source.

I knew about the -c option on lint.  However, I only knew because I looked
up lint before my last article.  I suspect you did the same.

In both the above cases, the sources must be compiled or run through
some processor with special extra operations.  As a practical matter,
no one ever ships a subroutine library with the appropriate 'lint library'
(or its IBM equivalent).  When someone sends you a dot-oh file, that's
all you get.  A feature that no one uses might as well not exist.

J. Giles
Los Alamos

P.S.  This is not to say that I don't agree with you.  The 'lint library'
type of information SHOULD be in the dot-oh file (not separately).  It
should be there by default - you should not be able to turn it off.  Also,
the appropriate tool to do the final checking is the loader (not the
compiler as in the IBM example above).