Using "lint" to Cleanup Your Code

If your code compiles, but doesn't run as well as you expected, try using lint to help you clean up your code. Lint, according to its manual page:

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.
To use lint, type:
lint file.c
If your source code involves more than one file, the format is:
lint file1.c file2.c file3.c
Note that lint works on files written in traditional C (i.e., code conforming to Kernighan and Ritchie, 1st edition). It will not work for ANSI C files. If you are writing in Ansi C and wish to check your code, you can use Saber. You may, however, find that your compiler gives you adequate information to clean your code of those basic errors that lint would catch.

Also, even if your code DOES run well, it's usually desirable to write lint-free code.

For further information on lint, type the following at your athena% prompt:

man lint