Automatic Detection of C++ Programming Errors: Initial Thoughts on a lint++.
Scott Meyers, Moises Lejter · 1991
In this paper we argue that there is sufficient experience with C++ to justify the development of a tool that examines C++ programs for the presence of likely programmer errors, and we describe a number of common mistakes that could be detected by such a tool. We show that such a tool would be both straightforward to develop and efficient to apply. We also discuss how such a tool could be extended to detect violations of design constraints expressed in some as-yet-to-be-developed C++ metalanguage. Introduction It is a fact of life that programmers make mistakes when writing programs. The kinds of mistakes that interest us are not those that are errors (i.e., violations of the rules of the language), but are instead legal constructs that mean something other than what the programmer likely intends them to mean. Some of the mistakes of this kind are straightforward enough that it is possible to write a program to detect them, and some are common enough that it is worthwhile to do ...