NAME

lint − a C program verifier

SYNOPSIS

lint [ −abchnpuvx ] file ... 

DESCRIPTION

Lint attempts to detect features of the C program files which are likely to be bugs, non-portable, or wasteful.  Lint also checks the type usage of the program more thoroughly than the compilers.  Among the problems currently detected are unreachable statements, loops not entered at the top, automatic variables declared and not used, and logical expressions with a constant value.  The usage of functions is also checked to locate functions which return values in some places and not in others, functions called with varying numbers of arguments, and functions with unused values. 

By default, it is assumed that all the files are to be loaded together; these files are checked for mutual compatibility.  Function definitions for certain libraries are available to lint; these libraries are referred to by a conventional name, such as ‘−lm’, in the style of ld(1).

Any number of the options in the following list may be used.  The −D, −U, and −I options of cc(1) are also recognized as separate arguments.

p Attempt to check portability to the IBM and GCOS dialects of C. 

h Apply a number of heuristic tests to attempt to intuit bugs, improve style, and reduce waste. 

b Report break statements that cannot be reached.  (This is not the default, as most lex and many yacc outputs produce quantities of such comments.) 

v Suppress complaints about unused arguments in functions. 

x Report variables referred to by extern declarations, but never used. 

a Report assignments of long values to int variables. 

c Complain about casts which have questionable portability. 

u Do not complain about functions and variables used and not defined, or defined and not used (this is suitable for running lint on a subset of files out of a larger program). 

n Do not check compatibility against the standard library. 

Exit(2), and other functions which do not return are not understood; this causes various inaccuracies.

Certain conventional comments in the C source change the behavior of lint:

/\(**NOTREACHED\(**/
At appropriate points stops comments about unreachable code.

/\(**VARARGSn\(**/
Suppresses the usual checking for variable numbers of arguments in the following function declaration. The data types of the first n arguments are checked; a missing n is assumed to be 0. 

/\(**NOSTRICT\(**/
Shuts off strict type checking in the next expression.

/\(**ARGSUSED\(**/
Turns on the −v option for the next function. 

/\(**LINTLIBRARY\(**/
at the beginning of a file shuts off complaints about unused functions in this file.

FILES

/usr/lib/lint/lint[12] programs
/usr/lib/lint/llib-lc declarations for standard functions
/usr/lib/lint/llib-port declarations for portable functions

SEE ALSO

cc(1)
S. C. Johnson, Lint, a C Program Checker

BUGS

There are some things you just cannot get lint to shut up about. 

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  %W%