Discarded Function Values (To Cast or Not to Cast)

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1989Nov23.233403.2841 at twwells.com> bill at twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes:
>function returns value which is always ignored
>    fprintf         umask           putenv
>    setgid          setuid          time
>    signal          strcpy          unlink
>    fflush          printf          sprintf
>    strcat          sleep           fputs
>(The sum total of lint warnings from a program *under
>development*. I can tell you why *each* of these is there. And I
>can tell you, also, which I'm not going to get rid of in the
>production version.)

Anybody maintaining this code will have to determine why EACH warning
occurs and whether or not it represents a potential problem.  For
example, when *printf() and fflush() report errors, is it really safe
to not detect that?  In most production applications, it would be a
serious mistake to ignore an output error.

Similar things could be said about most of these functions (the str*()
family being the exception, since they never report failure).

Your code may be perfectly okay, but from years of experience
maintaining UNIX system code written by other people, I've found
that I cannot afford to ignore such "lint" warnings.  If, on the
other hand, I've taken the trouble to completely inspect and de-lint
a chunk of software, then at any future date when "lint" shows up in
it I know there is a real problem.  In the long run it saves me time.

P.S. I don't think you should take counterarguments so personally.
As I said, if your approach works for you, more power to you.  Mine
certainly works better for me.