Comment by pseudohadamard
3 days ago
I always build with -Wall so I'm used to seeing the warning:
> clang -Wall test.c
test.c:4:16: warning: variable 'i' is uninitialized when used here [-Wuninitialized]
4 | return i;
| ^
test.c:3:14: note: initialize the variable 'i' to silence this warning
3 | int i;
| ^
| = 0
1 warning generated.
For the oldest compiler I have access to, VC++ 6.0 from 1998:
warning C4700: uninitialized local variable 'i' used
The trouble with warnings is every compiler has a different set of warnings. It balkanizes the language. Many D features are the result of cherry picking warnings from various compilers and making them standard features.
> It balkanizes the language.
Not really, as C has had even more diverse implementations per-standardization. I would say the situation is now, much less diverse under the rule of GCC and Clang. (Yeah MSVC also exists.)
Every switch that changes the language semantics creates a separate language. If you have n such switches, your compiler is supporting n x n languages. I've also had troubles writing portable C code with all warnings enabled as different compilers contradicted each other on what was acceptable.
I tried pretty hard to make D a warning-less language, but still some crept in grump grump.
Have fun with this one:
One of the best programmers I know came up to me with this loop and told me my C compiler was broken because the loop was only executed once. I pointed at the ; and you can guess the rest.
I added a warning for that in the C compiler, and for D simply disallowed it. I've noticed that some C compilers have since added a warning for that as well. The C folks should just make it illegal.
I've also fixed printf in D so that:
gives an error message, and the right format to use for `p`. It was a little thing, but it sure found a lot of incorrect formats in my code.
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