Wish: Variable Not Used Warning

[JAnderson]

Manfred_Nowak wrote:
> JAnderson wrote:
> 
>> The more warnings as errors the better.  If I have to suffer a
>> little for false positives *shrug*
> 
> What do you understand by "a little"?

I don't understand what your asking.  I meant that if I have to fix it 
because the compiler tells me its an error then so be it.  Its a little 
pain for a lot of gain.

> 
> Please look at the example from 
> http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?
> art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=73441 
> 
> Do you recognize how many warnings a lint tool might emit on that code?
> Would you admit then, that a paranoic lint would be quite useless, even 
> if it detects that the variable `p' should be accessed?

I don't understand?  With lint it just gives you hints about what could 
be wrong.  You pick and choose what to fix.

> Would you 
> admit, that you yourself are unable to decide whether the presence of 
> some access statements to `p' should suppress the warning?

I would prefer this be an error like C#.  In C++ because all my warnings 
are errors it would be an error too.  If you really want to use an 
uninitialized variable there should be a work around but it should be 
harder to do.

> My understanding of lint tools is, that they incorporate a collection 
> of programming patterns together with a fuzzy recognition algorithm. If 
> there are enough hits for a specific pattern, but it is still only 
> partial implemented, then warnings are generated. Under this the 
> primary question is: what is so special to the collection of 
> programming patterns that they can be formalized into a lint tool but 
> not be used as paradigms in the source language?

For me, anything that isn't really an error (and I think a lot more of 
C++ warnings should be errors).  This means the lint effort can be 
separate.  It means they can continually add and remove checks while the 
compiler is worked on as a separate effort.  Things like unused 
variables might be a candidate however being the pedantic coder that I 
am, I prefer them as errors as well.  I simply don't add an identifier 
or I semicolon the value when I'm writting stubs.

> 
> -manfred  
>