| LINT(1) | General Commands Manual | LINT(1) | 
lint —
| lint | [ -abceFgHhPprVvwxz] [-i|-nu] [-S|-s|-t]
      [-Bdirectory]
      [-Dname[=def]]
      [-ddirectory]
      [-Idirectory]
      [-Ldirectory]
      [-MD] [-llibrary] [-ooutputfile] [-Uname] [-Xid[,id ...]] file ... | 
| lint | [ -abceFgHhprVvwz] [-S|-s|-t]-Clibrary
      [-Bdirectory]
      [-Dname[=def]]
      [-ddirectory]
      [-Idirectory]
      [-MD] [-Rold=new] [-Uname] [-Xid[,id ...]] file ... | 
lint attempts to detect features of the named C program
  files that are likely to be bugs, to be non-portable, or to be wasteful. It
  also performs stricter type checking than does the C compiler. The list of
  errors lint produces are enumerated in
  lint(7).
lint runs the C preprocessor as its first
    phase, with the following preprocessor symbols defined to allow certain
    questionable code to be altered or skipped: __LINT__,
    lint, __lint,
    __lint__. These symbols should therefore be thought of as
    reserved words for all code that is to be checked by
    lint.
Among the possible problems that are currently noted are unreachable statements, loops not entered at the top, variables declared and not used, and logical expressions with constant values. Function calls are checked for inconsistencies, such as calls to functions that return values in some places and not in others, functions called with varying numbers of arguments, function calls that pass arguments of a type other than the type the function expects to receive, functions whose values are not used, and calls to functions not returning values that use the non-existent return value of the function.
Filename arguments ending with .c are
    taken to be C source files. Filename arguments with names ending with
    .ln are taken to be the result of an earlier
    invocation of lint, with either the
    -i, -o or
    -C option in effect. The .ln
    files are analogous to the .o (object) files
    produced by cc(1) from
    .c files. lint also accepts
    special libraries specified with the -l option,
    which contain definitions of library routines and variables.
lint takes all the
    .c, .ln, and
    llib-llibrary.ln
    (lint library) files and processes them in command-line order. By default,
    lint appends the standard C lint library
    (llib-lc.ln) to the end of the list of files. When
    the -i option is used, the
    .ln files are ignored. Also, when the
    -o or -i options are used,
    the
    llib-llibrary.ln
    files are ignored. When the -i option is
    omitted the second pass of lint
    checks this list of files for mutual compatibility. At this point, if a
    complaint stems not from a given source file, but from one of its included
    files, the source filename will be printed followed by a question mark.
The special input file name
    “-” causes
    lint to take input from standard input (until end of
    file) and process it as if it were a .c file. If the
    -i flag is given and
    “-” is named as one of the input
    files, the -o flag must also be specified to provide
    an output file name.
Options
-a-aa-a, report all
      assignments of integer values to other integer values which cause implicit
      narrowing conversion.-Bpath-b-Clibrarylint library with the name
      llib-llibrary.ln.
      This library is built from all .c and
      .ln input files. After all global definitions of
      functions and variables in these files are written to the newly created
      library, lint checks all input files, including
      libraries specified with the -l option, for mutual
      compatibility.-c-Dname[=def]#define directive. If no definition is given,
      name is defined as 1.-ddirectory-e-Flint normally prints the
      filename without the path.-g-g flag also turns on the keywords
      asm and inline (alternative keywords
      with leading underscores for both asm and
      inline are always available).-Hlint
      prints the name of the included file instead of the source file name
      followed by a question mark.-h-Idirectory-ilint's first pass only, and are not checked for
      compatibility between functions.-Ldirectory-llibrary-MD-MD to
      cpp(1) causing cpp to create
      files containing dependency information for each source file.-n-ooutputfilelint's
      second pass. The -o option simply saves this file
      in the named output file. If the -i option is also
      used the files are not checked for compatibility. To produce a
      llib-llibrary.ln
      without extraneous messages, use of the -u option
      is suggested. The -v option is useful if the
      source file(s) for the lint library are just external interfaces.-P-p-R
    old=new-r-S-s-s flag,
      __STRICT_ANSI__ is a predefined preprocessor
      macro.-t__STDC__ is not predefined in
      this mode. Warnings are printed for constructs not allowed in traditional
      C. Warnings for constructs which behave differently in traditional C and
      ANSI C are suppressed. Preprocessor macros describing the machine type
      (e.g. sun3) and machine architecture (e.g.
      m68k) are defined without leading and trailing
      underscores. The keywords const,
      volatile and signed are not available
      in traditional C mode (although the alternative keywords with leading
      underscores still are).-Uname-ulint on a subset of files comprising part of a
      larger program).-Vlint's first and second
    pass.-v-w-X
    id[,id ...]-x-zInput Grammar
lint's first pass reads standard C source
    files. lint recognizes the following C comments as
    commands.
/*
    ARGSUSEDn */lint check only the first
      n arguments for usage; a missing
      n is taken to be 0 (this option acts like the
      -v option for the next function)./*
    BITFIELDTYPE *//*
    CONSTCOND */ or /*
    CONSTANTCOND */ or /*
    CONSTANTCONDITION *//*
    FALLTHRU */ or /*
    FALLTHROUGH *//*
    LINTLIBRARY *//*
    LINTEDn [comment]
    */ or /*
    NOSTRICTn [comment]
    *//*
    LONGLONG *//*
    NOTREACHED *//*
    PRINTFLIKEn */lint check the first
      (n-1) arguments as usual.
      The n-th argument is
      interpreted as a printf format string that is used to
      check the remaining arguments./*
    PROTOLIBn */lint to treat function declaration
      prototypes as function definitions if n is non-zero.
      This directive can only be used in conjunction with the
      /* LINTLIBRARY */ directive. If
      n is zero, function prototypes will be treated
      normally./*
    SCANFLIKEn */lint check the first
      (n-1) arguments as usual.
      The n-th argument is
      interpreted as a scanf format string that is used to
      check the remaining arguments./*
    VARARGSn */The behavior of the -i and the
    -o options allows for incremental use of
    lint on a set of C source files. Generally, one
    invokes lint once for each source file with the
    -i option. Each of these invocations produces a
    .ln file that corresponds to the
    .c file, and prints all messages that are about just
    that source file. After all the source files have been separately run
    through lint, it is invoked once more (without the
    -i option), listing all the
    .ln files with the needed
    -llibrary options. This will
    print all the inter-file inconsistencies. This scheme works well with
    make(1); it allows
    make(1) to be used to
    lint only the source files that have been modified
    since the last time the set of source files were
    linted.
LIBDIR-llibrary option must exist.
      If this environment variable is undefined, then the default path
      /usr/libdata/lint will be used to search for the
      libraries.TMPDIRCCStatic functions which are used only before their first extern declaration are reported as unused.
Libraries created by the -o option will,
    when used in later lint runs, cause certain errors
    that were reported when the libraries were created to be reported again, and
    cause line numbers and file names from the original source used to create
    those libraries to be reported in error messages. For these reasons, it is
    recommended to use the -C option to create lint
    libraries.
| December 24, 2016 | NetBSD 9.3 |