lclint-interest message 32

From: Jon Freeman 
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 13:16:27 -0400
To: lclint-interest@larch.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Introduction

My name is Jon Freeman, and I've just started using lclint here at
J. P. Morgan.  I've already played around with it a little on some
of our source code, and I'm very impressed with its thoroughness and
customizability.  If the other people in my group agree with me, I'll
modify our best practices document to recommend that lclint be run on
all of our source code prior to a new release.

Here are my current questions and problems, in decreasing order of
importance:

1.  We have a routine for logging error messages that has exactly the
same arguments as printf and fprintf.  On two occasions, we've gotten
burned by calling this routine with the wrong number of arguments
vis-a-vis the format string.  This was my primary motivation for looking
around for a better version of lint.  If it's at all possible to get
lclint to check these arguments as it does with printf, I would be
extremely grateful.

2.  lclint is giving me false used-before-set warnings in the following
way:  A lot of our routines have a local uninitialized char buffer that
gets filled by passing it to a second, lower-level routine.  What's the
best way to indicate to lclint that these buffers ARE getting initialized
by the lower-level routines?

3.  I've already gotten lclint to die painfully on a couple of occasions.
I'll send transcripts later when it's convenient.  My question:  Have any
of the lclint developers tried using a tool like Purify to catch memory-
corruption problems?  It works like a charm for us, and it could greatly
improve lclint's robustness.

			Thanks,
			 Jon
			 (freeman_jon@jpmorgan.com)