LINT(1)                 GENIX Programmer's Manual                 LINT(1)



      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, or non-portable, or wasteful.  It also checks the
           type usage of the program more strictly than the  compilers.   Among
           the  things  which  are  currently found are unreachable statements,
           loops not entered at the top, automatic variables declared  and  not
           used,  and  logical  expressions whose value is constant.  Moreover,
           the usage of functions is checked to  find  functions  which  return
           values in some places and not in others, functions called with vary-
           ing numbers of arguments, and functions whose values are not used.

           By default, it is assumed that  all  the  files  are  to  be  loaded
           together;  they  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 because, unfortunately, most lex and many yacc out-
                puts produce dozens 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.





      Printed 11/16/83                                                        1

      LINT(1)                 GENIX Programmer's Manual                 LINT(1)



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

           Certain conventional comments  in  the  C  source  will  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 taken 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/bin/lib/lint/lint[12] programs
           /usr/bin/lib/lint/llib-lc declarations for standard functions
           /usr/bin/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 can't get lint to shut up about.




















      Printed 11/16/83                                                        2