[svlug] Meaning of a phrase

[Dan Martinez]

Todd Lyons wrote:

> I saw the phrase "delinting" used in a description in a changelog.
> Obviously it has to do with cleaning up the code because it says it
> "can now pass -Wall." Where does "lint" come from?

It's the name of a program used to perform static checks on C source
code, looking for things like uninitialized variables, type
mismatches, and so on. Back in the days when Men Were Men and C
compilers were happy to hand you as much rope as you asked for, it was
indispensable.

Nowadays, C compilers are both smarter and less reluctant to pipe up
when you do something stupid, so lint the program doesn't see the
heavy usage that it once did. The name, however, survives.

Apparently the cutting edge in lint technlogy is something called
"LCLint", which can perform the standard lint checks, but can also do
more detailed analysis if you oblige it by annotating your code:

http://lclint.cs.virginia.edu/

I'm not sure whether the name "lint" is a contraction of some longer
phrase, or simply a reference to picking the fluff off of source code.

See also the Jargon File:

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/lint.html

> (I seem to recall the word glint somewhere.)

Perhaps in reference to glint, Red Hat's GraphicaL INsTall tool of
yore.

Dan