Wish: Variable Not Used Warning

[Manfred_Nowak]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:

> Like I've said, compiler warnings are essentialy a built-in lint
> tool. 

Finally the contradiction seems to show up: if lint is a tool in its 
own right, then one must have strong arguments to incorporate it into 
any other tool.

In the paralell posting Walter remarks but not emphasizes that 
compilers have more goals, than enabling the evaluation of sources, on 
which your OP concentrates. Building large software systems and 
migrating some application source to another architecture are in the 
duties of compilers.

For at least huge parts of these latter tasks a reevaluation of some 
static aspects of semantics of the application is useless but time 
consuming. In addition and by definition lint tools are not capable of 
doing more than this.

This is the central point: lint tools are only capable of informing 
about possible bugs. If a warning emitted by a lint tool would be a 
sure hint for a bug in the program, then the compiler should have 
emitted an error.

Thus there should be no need to incorporate any lint tool into any 
compiler. I am ready to read your counter arguments.

-manfred

-- 
Maybe some knowledge of some types of disagreeing and their relation 
can turn out to be useful:
http://blog.createdebate.com/2008/04/07/writing-strong-arguments/