Wish: Variable Not Used Warning

[Markus Koskimies]

On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:53:52 -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

> In a "properly defined language", how would you solve the problem of
> unintentionally-unused variables?

My suggestion: just give error. No need for "unused" keyword, just 
comment out code that has no effects.

For function arguments, if they are unused but mandatory because of 
keeping interface, leave it without name if it is not used.

Furthermore, give also errors unused private/static things. If they are 
not used, why are they in the code? Just comment them out.

In similar manner, warn about conditional expressions that have constant 
value (like "uint a; if(a > 0) { ... }"), code that has no effect and all 
those things :)

And yes, warnings could be considered as "optional errors" for us who 
think that it's best to tackle all sorts of quirks & potential bugs at 
compile time and not trying to find them with runtime debugging. As long 
as the warning makes some sense and can be circumvented in some 
reasonable way, just throw it to my screen :)