What Was New in Version 7.00?

New Features | New Options | Support for Embedded Systems | New Messages |  Designer's Notes | What's new in Version 7.50? | What's new in Version 8.00? 

Version 7.00 featured lots of new checks and features, including inter-statement value tracking, to detect even more of those hard-to-find-bugs.

We addressed a number of problems that users have been faced with. In particular, support for long filenames. 

We support incremental linting of C++ code and, therefore, we've discontinued "PC-lint for C". PC-lint for C/C++ version 7.00 will process a mixed suite of C and C++ modules and is upward compatible with all previous versions of PC-lint.
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New Features

• As discussed in the Designer's Notes, the biggest 'New' is that Version 7.00 has inter-statement Value Tracking. Values assigned to auto variables and data members of the this class (for member functions) are recorded and/or deduced and this information is retained across statement boundaries.

• With Value Tracking as an enabling technology, the calls to a large number of standard functions are checked in a variety of ways and these checks can be extended to user functions.
• Macros are subject to increased scrutiny. Unparenthesized parameters and unparenthesized macro bodies in arithmetic contexts are flagged as well as macro arguments with side-effects being passed to repeated parameters.
• Improvements have been made in detecting improper class constructions. These include members not initialized by constructors (1541, 1741), destructors that fail to free (1540), failing to check assignment to this (1529), and failing to check sizeof(class) in allocation functions (1531, 1921).
• Order of Initialization dependencies for C++'s famous static initialization problem: The C++ language offers a great deal of freedom in initializing static variables. The bad news is that you can create an order of initialization dependency. The good news is that PC-lint/FlexeLint 7.00 will find it.
• Lint Object Modules are fully supported.
• New ways to torture-test your code include turning on flags +fsc (string constants are const char) and +fpn (pointer parameters may be NULL).
• Blanks are permitted within parenthesized options making them more readable.
• A z softener (ignore 0) has been added to the strong type flags A and J. Also, you can make some or all of the links in your strong type hierarchy one way (up).
• Chapter 15 of the manual, Error Messages is provided in an ASCII format as msg.txt

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New Flag Options

• fff    Fold Filenames (when OFF, filenames will not be folded to a single case).
• ffn    use Full (file) Names in messages
• fhd    strong-Hierarchy-Down (normally ON) when turned OFF, the default relationship of strong types is like father rather than parent.
• fiq    Ignore-default-Qualifier
• flc    allow for long-char
• fll    allow for long-long
• fpn    Pointer-parameter-may-be-NULL
• fsc    String constants are const char

New Error Inhibition Options

• -elibsym(#[,#]...)   inhibits...
• +elibsym(#[,#]...)   re-enables...
  the numbered messages that are parameterized by library header symbols.

New Size Options

• -sll#    specifies the size of long long

Other New (or Extended) Options

• +ext(extension[,extension]...)
  specifies the list of default extensions tried by PC-lint/FlexeLint and the order in which they are tried when an extension-less filename is provided as argument.
• -father(Parent,Child[,Child]...)
  is like -parent except that it makes the relationship strict, such that a Child type can be assigned to a Parent type but not conversely.
• +/-lnt(extension[,extension]...)
  add/remove an extension from the list of filename extensions used to indicate indirect files.
• +macros
  increases the size of macro storage.
• -oe( filename )
  redirects output intended for Standard Error (stderr) to the named file.
• -p[(width)]
  The optional argument (width) denotes an upper bound on the length of the output lines when in pre-processing mode.

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More Support for Embedded Systems

Compilers for embedded systems often extend C in (non standard) ways that could trip up PC-lint/FlexeLint. Accordingly, we have added several options to support the most common extensions. +fba is the Bit addressability flag that will allow, for example, n.3 to represent the 3rd bit of integer variable n. Another extension allows for specifying the address of a memory mapped object. For example,

    Port pa = 0xFFFF0000;  

We now support some of the unusual syntactic constructs of the Whitesmith compiler. Use of the -cwh option allows us to support, for example,

    @eeprom char x @base +1;  

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All together we've added 86 new messages in Version 7.00
Here is a sampling:

613   Possible use of null pointer in [left/right] argument to operator 'String'
661   Possible access of out-of-bounds pointer by operator 'String'
662   Possible creation of out-of-bounds pointer by operator 'String'
665   Unparenthesized parameter 'Integer' in macro 'Symbol' is passed an expression
666   Expression with side effects passed to repeated parameter 'Integer' of macro 'Symbol'
668   Possibly passing a null pointer to function 'Symbol', 'Context'
669   Possible data overrun for function 'Symbol', argument 'Integer' exceeds argument 'Integer'
670   Possible access beyond array for function 'Symbol', argument 'Integer' exceeds 'Integer'
773   Expression-like macro 'Symbol' not parenthesized
1401  member 'Symbol' (Location) not initialized by constructor
1529  'Symbol' not first checking for assignment to this
1540  pointer member 'Symbol' (Location) neither freed nor zero’ed by destructor
1541  member 'Symbol' (Location) possibly not initialized by constructor
1542  member 'Symbol' (Location) possibly not initialized
1544  value of 'Symbol' (Location) indeterminate (order of initialization)
1545  value of 'Symbol' used previously to initialize 'Symbol' (Location)
1740  pointer member 'Symbol' (Location) not directly freed or zero'ed by destructor
1744  member 'Symbol' (Location) possibly not initialized by private constructor