Computer/Software/Programming/Tools/Static source code analyzers
Frequently asked questions about static source code analysis
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There's a free lint utility that comes with UNIX, why should I want to pay for a commercial static source analysis tool?

Today's commercial lint tools are the progeny of a free lint utility that was released with Unix. Unix's lint was originally developed to help ensure consistency of function calls across boundaries. While the proper use of ANSI can help solve this problem today, most other sources of errors in C code remain, including the following: uninitialized variables, order of evaluation dependencies, loss of precision, potential uses of the null pointer, consistency problems, and programmer error. In addition, the Unix lint utility is difficult to use and has never been fully utilized by Unix programmers, according to Tom Parker, Technical Consultant for the Scientific Computing Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "Cleanscape took the idea of a static source code analyzer and enhanced it to produce lint tools for Fortran and C that could provide extensive source code analysis," Parker said.

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