Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!reading!cf-cm!sme
From: sme@computing-maths.cardiff.ac.uk (Simon Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Strange lint mumblings
Summary: Lint Directives
Message-ID: <592@cf-cm.UUCP>
Date: 19 Dec 88 14:26:24 GMT
References: <416@marob.MASA.COM> <11467@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Organization: University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff, WALES, UK.
Lines: 36

In article <11467@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>, earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton) writes:
> In article <416@marob.MASA.COM> daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond) writes:
> >Can anyone explain why the statement:
> >    exit(0);	/* followed immediately by main's closing brace */
> >causes lint to complain:
> >(137)  warning: main() returns random value to invocation environment

>	[discussion deleted] 
>      How about:

> 	return(exit(0));
> }

Well, in my manual (Section 2: 'Lint, a C Program Checker' by S.C.Johnson)
there is a section entitled 'Shutting Lint Up', with a comment to the effect
that sometimes the programmer is smarter than lint.

Following is a discussion  of the directives (syntactically comments) that
a programmer can use to let lint know that the programmer really knows what
(s)he is doing.  Among these are:

/*VARARGS*/ preceding a function definition, to let lint know it shouldn't
            complain about variable numbers of arguments to calls of the 
            following function.

/*NOTREACHED*/ to let lint know that a particular spot in the code is
            never executed.

There are several more such directives.

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Elliott            Internet: sme%v1.cm.cf.ac.uk@cunyvm.cuny.edu
UWCC Computer Centre     JANET:    sme@uk.ac.cf.cm.v1
40/41 Park Place         UUCP:     {backbones}!mcvax!ukc!reading!cf-cm!sme
Cardiff, Wales           PHONE:    +44 222 874300