- Lint (software)
In
computer programming , lint was the name originally given to a particular program that flagged suspicious and non-portable constructs (likely to be bugs) in C languagesource code . The term is now applied generically to tools that flag suspicious usage in software written in anycomputer language . The term lint-like behavior is sometimes applied to the process of flagging suspicious language usage. lint-like tools generally perform static analysis of source code.Suspicious usage includes: variables being used before being set, conditions that are constant, and calculations whose result is likely to be outside the range of values representable in the type used.
The term was derived from the name of the undesirable bits of fiber and fluff found in
sheep 'swool .Many of the forms of analysis performed by lint-like tools are also performed by
optimizing compiler s (whose prime motivation is to generate higher quality code), and moderncompiler s can often detect many of the constructs traditionally warned about by lint.Writers of lint-like tools have continued to improve the range of suspicious constructs that they detect. Modern tools perform forms of analysis that many optimizing compilers typically don't do, such as cross-module consistency checking, checking that the code will be portable to other compilers, and supporting annotations that specify intended behavior or properties of code.
Lint first appeared (outside of
Bell Labs ) in the seventh version (V7) of the UNIXoperating system in1979 . It was derived from PCC, thePortable C Compiler , which was included with that system. Lint and PCC were developed byStephen C. Johnson , who also authored the parser generatoryacc .ee also
*
List of tools for static code analysis References
*Stephen Johnson. "Lint, a C program checker". Computer Science Technical Report 65,
Bell Laboratories , December1977 .External links
*Book: [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lint/ Checking C Programs with Lint] by Ian F. Darwin (ISBN 0-937175-30-7)
*Man page : http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3567/lint.html
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