lint381

lint381 checks your EECS 381 projects for coding style errors.

See http://umich.edu/~eecs381/ for the course homepage. The coding standards can be found here:

• C coding standard
• C++ coding standard
• C header file guidelines
• C++ header file guidelines

Here's lint381 in action:

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for information on how to contribute to the project. Patches welcome!

Usage

lint381 requires Python 3, so you may want to install it inside a virtualenv or use pip3 instead of pip.

Install it:

$ pip install lint381

Pass source files to lint381 to have it check them. Typically you'll just use a pattern like *.cpp *.h to match all source files in the current directory.

$ lint381 *.cpp *.h

If lint381 detected any errors, it will exit with a non-zero status and print the errors. Otherwise it will exit with zero and produce no output.

By default, lint381 assumes your source files are in C++. You can explicitly set the language with --lang=c or --lang=cpp:

$ lint381 --lang=c *.c *.h

Features

C checks

The C linter flags the following:

• Use of prohibited types (such as unsigned and float).
• Macros that start with an underscore, as they are reserved by the implementation.
• Non-uppercase #defines (#define foo is wrong, #define FOO is right).
• structs and enums that aren't capitalized.
• enums that don't end with _e.
• typedefs that don't end with _t.
• Non-idiomatic comparison to NULL (such as if (foo == NULL)).
• Enum members that aren't all-caps.
• Casting the result of malloc (such as foo = (char*) malloc(...)).
• Defining string constants as an array instead of a pointer.
• Use of sizeof(char).
• Putting user includes after system includes.
• Not including the module header as the first include in the file.

C++ checks

The C++ linter flags the following:

• All C checks above, except those that are obviated (e.g. we now use nullptr instead of NULL, and don't use malloc).
• Comments with three asterisks (***) as those are provided by Kieras and should be removed.
• Use of NULL instead of nullptr.
• Use of malloc/free instead of new/delete.
• Use of typedef instead of using.
• Use of prohibited functions such as memmove or exit.
• Creating a type alias for an iterator instead of its container (i.e. using Foo_t = std::vector<int>::iterator instead of using Foo_t = std::vector<int>; /* ... */ Foo_t::iterator).
• Use of #define to create constants.
• Use of class instead of typename in template parameters.
• Use of 0 or 1 in loop conditions instead of true or false.
• Use of string::compare.
• Comparing size() to 0 instead of using empty.
• Use of post-increment instead of pre-increment for iterators.
• Catching exceptions by value instead of by reference.
• Unused using-statements, such as using std::cout;.
• Using enums instead of enum classes.
• Naming enum classes with a trailing _e, which is the convention for C but not C++.
• Uppercase enum class members, which is unnecessary because they are scoped.

emacs

lint381 can now be used for inline style checking within emacs using flycheck. Download and follow the directions in lint381.el to set it up.

vim

lint381 can also be used for inline style checking within vim using Syntastic. Download and follow the directions in lint381.vim to set it up.

License

lint381 is licensed under GPLv3.