On Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:52:22 +0100, bearophile <bearophileh...@lycos.com>
wrote:
Regan Heath:
If you make detecting un-used variables a /requirement/ for
implementing a D compiler, you make it that much less likely someone
will write one,
Detecting unused variables can be written as a part of the front-end.
Or it can be written using the front-end.
It's meant to be shared by LDC and GDC that use the same front-end.
Why?
We may have gotten used to it being there, but it's not part of the
"compilation" phase but rather part of the "development" phase and/or
the "quality control" phase which are arguably the realm of the IDE or
a "lint" checker.<
In theory you are right, in practice I don't know how much this idea is
applicable to D/DMD and how much good it does.
In Clang they have added a switch to perform extra static tests on the
code. It's a feature built in the compiler. I think this is an
acceptable place to put an unused variable warning in DMD.
You're missing my main point which is that you can get the appearance of a
compiler feature with a 3rd party tool bundled with the compiler, the
difference/benefits of a 3rd party tool are:
1. The "feature" it implements is not a requirement for all D compilers.
2. Walter doesn't have to implement it.
And more minor points include:
3. We can have competition between 3rd party vendors.
4. People can select/run their favorite tool.
5. A crashing tool/feature will no stop compilation.
Basically, having a 3rd party tool will look exactly like a feature of the
compiler, but it will be better for the reasons above.
R
