LINT(1) 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
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, 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 outputs produce dozens of such comments.)
v Suppress complaints about unused arguments in func-
tions.
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 portabil-
ity.
LINT(1) LINT(1)
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.
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) for-
mat 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