Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: YALF (yet another lint foulup)
Message-ID: <755@auspex.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 88 07:27:53 GMT
References: <4700030@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <717@auspex.UUCP> <122@mole-end.UUCP>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 22

>I believe that /*NOTREACHED*/ is for things like exit(), which cannot return
>at all.  Given that LINT professes to know about variables used before set,
>it is certainly LINT's business to do a little basic flow analysis.  It
>would be nice if LINT would warn that this ``loop'' does not and can not loop.

That's nice; unfortunately, the S5R3 "lint" doesn't really back this
belief up - it merely gives "exit()" as an example, and just says that
"at appropriate points (it) stops comments about unreachable code." It
would be nice if "lint" did a better job of flow analysis; however,
until it does, I see little point in *not* using /*NOTREACHED*/ to quiet
the noise from "lint" so that one can do a better job of finding the
signal.

>With ANSI C and function prototypes, we may hope that LINT goes away.  We
>now understand better what sort of checks to apply (Bjarne Stroustrup's C++
>processors do a much better job than LINT, and without the extraneous noise)
>and it makes sense to put them in the compiler.

Well, perhaps.  Some of the "-h" checks ("h" can stand either for
"heuristic" or "hack") are useful, even though they could be considered
hacks; they warn of perfectly legal constructs that are generally the
result of a slip of the fingers.