Re: Language pitfalls (was Re: FORTRAN bug)

[psinntp!calspan!westley@uunet.uu.net (Terry J. Westley)]

In article <EACHUS.92Dec15202249@oddjob.mitre.org> eachus@oddjob.mitre.org (Rob
ert I. Eachus) writes:
>    Actually, there is an Ada rule which normally catches this,

["this" refers to substituting "null" for "return null" by mistake]

>and
>which Robert Dewar and I have argued should be removed in Ada 9X.  (A
>function must contain a return statement RM 6.5(1).)  If it belongs on
>the top ten list, then the rule should stay.
>
>    (What Robert Dewar and I objected to was that certain functions
>whose only intended effect is to raise an exception must still contain
>a return statement.  This results in junk return statements in stubbed
>out code, and makes a stubber much harder to write.)
>
>--
>
>					Robert I. Eachus

Many compilers produce a warning for such a situation.  IMHO, this is
good but doesn't go far enough.

I hate compiler warnings; I will typically do anything to eliminate them
because I done't want to keep rereading the same warnings every time a unit
is compiled.  Sometimes, they cannot be eliminated as in the example above.

I would like to have the ability, perhaps with a pragma, which allows me to
tell the compiler that I know a certain statement will raise a warning of
a certain class and to suppress the warning.  This must be done on a statement
by statement (really warning by warning) basis.  Turning off all the warnings
is too dangerous.  They really are useful.

Have any compiler gurus considered this?

-- 
Terry J. Westley, Principal Computer Scientist
Calspan Corporation, P.O. Box 400, Buffalo, NY 14225
westley@calspan.com
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