139 lines
3.5 KiB
Text
139 lines
3.5 KiB
Text
.NH
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Ideas for further development
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.PP
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Although the program in its current state is a useful program,
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there are still a lot of features that should be implemented
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in following versions.
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I'll summarize them in this section.
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.IP \(bu
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Actually the program consists of three passes.
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The filter
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.I sort
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is a complete pass, just as the first and the second pass.
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I think we speed up the program by removing the filter and making
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the second pass accept an unsorted file.
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The sorting process can be done in parallel to the first pass if
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both processes communicate through a pipe.
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In addition to this sorting, the second pass can generate already
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some warnings.
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(Warnings like \f(CW%s defined but never used\fP can only be
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generated after having processed all the input.)
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These warnings generated in parallel to the warnings of the first pass,
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should be sent to an intermediate file, otherwise the warnings would
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get messed up.
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Such an improvement will have best effect on a multi processing
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machine, but even on single processing machines this will give a better
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performance. (On a single processing machine the pipe should be
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replaced by an intermediate file.)
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.IP \(bu
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Expressions could be classified so
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.I lint
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can warn for some classes of expressions in strange contexts.
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Suppose as class <boolean>.
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\f(CWb\fP Will be of class <boolean> if e.g. \f(CWb\fP is assigned to
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the expression \f(CW<ex1> || <ex2>\fP.
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The following expression should then give a warning
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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b + i; /* weird expression */
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.R
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.DE
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.IP \(bu
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A mechanism to check printf like routines.
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This mechanism should verify the format string against the following
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arguments.
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There is a public domain program that can be used to do this job.
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It is called printfck and should be used as a filter between the
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source files and
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.I lint.
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.IP \(bu
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Raise warnings for incomplete initializer lists like
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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int a[10] = {0, 1, 2};
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/* initializer list not complete */
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.R
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.DE
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.IP \(bu
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Warnings for constructs like
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
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. . . .
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i--;
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/* loop control variable affected */
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. . . .
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}
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.R
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.DE
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and
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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while (var) {
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/* statements in which the value
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* of var is never changed
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*/
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}
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/* loop control variable not updated */
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.R
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.DE
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.IP \(bu
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A warning \f(CWbad layout\fP for program fragments like
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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if (cond1)
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if (cond2)
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statement();
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else /* bad layout */
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statement();
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.R
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.DE
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.IP \(bu
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A warning \f(CWassignment in conditional context\fP in case of
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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if (a = b)
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.R
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.DE
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.IP
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The programmer probably meant \f(CWif (a == b)\fP.
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No warning should be given for \f(CWif ((a = b) != c)\fP,
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nor for \f(CWif ((a = b))\fP.
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.IP \(bu
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Warnings for empty statements in strange contexts, like
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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if (cond); /* mistake */
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statement();
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.R
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.DE
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.IP
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(This mistake would also be detected by a warning \f(CWbad layout\fP.)
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.IP \(bu
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A mechanism to prevent the warning \f(CWpossible pointer alignment
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problem\fP for functions of which the programmer already knows that
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no problem will arise.
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E.g. for functions like malloc and family.
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.IP \(bu
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The current version of
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.I lint
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warns for conversions from long to int (if -a flag is
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on).
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It even warns if the programmer used the proper cast, as e.g.
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.DS B
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.ft CW
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int i;
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long l = 0L;
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i = (int)l;
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.R
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.DE
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.IP
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In this case I think
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.I lint
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need not warn.
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The explicit cast indicates that the programmer knows what he is
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doing.
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This feature is not implemented because the expression tree doesn't
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show if the cast was implicit or explicit.
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.bp
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