term% cat index.txt LINT(1) General Commands 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 log‐
ical expressions whose value is constant. Moreover, the usage of func‐
tions is checked to find functions which return values in some places
and not in others, functions called with varying 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, im‐
prove 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 de‐
fined, 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 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.
/*PRINTFLIKEn*/
The data types of the first n arguments are checked as usual.
The remaining arguments are checked against the n'th argument
which is interpreted as a printf(3) format string.
/*SCANFLIKEn*/
Similarly for scanf(3).
/*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), cyntax(1)
S. C. Johnson, Lint, a C Program Checker
LINT(1)