Software That Checks Software: The Impact of PC-lint

The article examines some fascinating insights into the growth, technology, and impact of the very widely used static analyzer PC-lint in the never-ending battle against the bug. Lint was a well-known utility in the Unix world. It was written by Steve Johnson, who also wrote the portable C compiler and invented Yet Another Compiler Compiler (YACC). Some programmers do not like the concept of a separate lint tool, having the mindset that the compiler should do that task. Most compilers allow the programmer to suppress messages by warning level, but this was a rather crude tool. In the first version, one could suppress by individual error message such as -e473 to suppress message 473. This is in sharp contrast to the typical compiler or lint diagnostic, where it is sufficient to merely point to the code that triggered the complaint. But when the complaint has to do with values that originate in code locations many lines from where the problem is discovered, it is vitally important to reveal as much information as possible.