questions from using lint

[George Robbins]

In article <942 at umd5.UUCP> zben at umd5.UUCP (Ben Cranston) writes:
>In article <219 at aplvax.UUCP> ded at aplvax.UUCP (Don E. Davis) writes:
>
>>In article <*> Root Boy Jim writes:
>>>You people fail to realize that some of us out here don't like lint.
>>>It complains too much about what I do. ... 
>
>>I know several excellent programmers who never use lint.  ...
>
>Hmm, I remember a certain Cobol compiler that had an 'E' option to generate
>error messages - because it generated such a quantity of informational
>diagnostics but its users wanted "clean compiles".  I can see Cobol types
>complaining about this, but US?
>

The whole lint/cc issue is probably one of those little misfeatures of unix
that we just have to live with.  Sure there are historical reasons, and nice
efficiency arguments for keeping the two separate, but if lint was a default
pass of the compiler that could be disabled, or diminished by a switch, then
there would be a whole lot more people using lint, and generating more
portable code than otherwise.

One of the more traumatic things about being exposed to unix after working
with numerous other systems was that the stupid c compiler refused to give me
a nice clean listing with source, interspersed error messages, and optional
object code.  I'm not dumb, but trying to learn a debug a big program though
a 24-line window and my memory just doesn't make it...

-- 
George Robbins - now working with,	uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|caip}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr at seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)