Lint (software) - Overview

Overview

Suspicious constructs include: 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.

Many of the forms of analysis performed by lint-like tools are also performed by optimizing compilers, whose prime motivation is to generate faster code. Modern compilers 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.