From owner-freebsd-arch  Thu Aug 16 23:33:19 2001
Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Received: from mailman.zeta.org.au (mailman.zeta.org.au [203.26.10.16])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2662637B40C
	for <arch@FreeBSD.ORG>; Thu, 16 Aug 2001 23:33:13 -0700 (PDT)
	(envelope-from bde@zeta.org.au)
Received: from bde.zeta.org.au (bde.zeta.org.au [203.2.228.102])
	by mailman.zeta.org.au (8.9.3/8.8.7) with ESMTP id QAA22232;
	Fri, 17 Aug 2001 16:31:38 +1000
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 16:31:36 +1000 (EST)
From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>
X-X-Sender:  <bde@besplex.bde.org>
To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
Cc: <arch@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: Style 9 nitpicking question 
In-Reply-To: <200108161551.f7GFpLK72129@grimreaper.grondar.za>
Message-ID: <20010817162340.O34503-100000@besplex.bde.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
List-ID: <freebsd-arch.FreeBSD.ORG>
List-Archive: <http://docs.freebsd.org/mail/> (Web Archive)
List-Help: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=help> (List Instructions)
List-Subscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=subscribe%20freebsd-arch>
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG?subject=unsubscribe%20freebsd-arch>
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Mark Murray wrote:

> > > Questions:
> > >
> > > 1) That "(void)" is useless by any metric that I am able to determine
> > >    (WARNS=2, BDECFLAGS etc), and gets in the way of linting. Is there
> > >    any reason to continue to advocate its use by this example? There
> > >    is no other reference to "voiding-out" of return values.
> >
> > It by prevents warnings like the following from `lint -h':
> >
> >     "snprintf returns a value which is sometimes ignored"
> >     "snprintf returns a value which is always ignored"
>
> Hmm - in the linting that I have done, I've told lint that ignoring
> the return value of ${THESE} functions is OK.
>
> (THESE = str* *printf, *scanf and a few others)

Ignoring the result of *printf is not always OK, and ignoring the result of
*scanf is almost never OK.

> > This is the opposite of getting in the way of linting.
>
> Sorta :-) Its often not a useful warning (most particularly for
> certain functions), and the (void) cast offends me because it is
> useless and obfuscating.

I don't like it much either, but it's normal practice in BSD code.

Bruce


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message