Yet Another Lint Foul-up

[David F. Carlson]

In article <1298 at tank.uchicago.edu>, vevea at paideia.uchicago.edu (Jack L. Vevea) writes:
> 
> 	I've passively watched the discussion of lint's problems with
>   exit(0) from main(), and find myself wondering why it matters.  I use
...
>   Why else be concerned when you _know_ that the warning is inconsequential?

Jack, you have stumbled on the difference between an academician "playing"
with a computer and a software engineer working with one.

Just as with comments ("why do I need comments since I know what this program
does anyway?"), the purpose of linting code is not for some anal retentive
satisfaction it gives but to engineer a product such that it can be as bug-free,
sematically valid and long-term maintainable as current tools (lint, etc.)
allow.  This is what doing a good job is.  If I patch together some scaffold
test code I don't care whether it lints.  However, when I produce a for-sale
productionized piece of code I want it to be sound not only for this compiler
and this developer but for any C compiler and any future maintainers.  Lint
isn't perfect but using it is infinitely preferable to pretending that my 
programs (before linting) are without easily detectable and correctable flaws.





-- 
David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc.
micropen!dave at ee.rochester.edu

"The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll