From: Charles Hixson <charleshixsn@...>
Date: 2000-10-18T04:40:01+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:5650] Re: lint?

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What might be nice would be a knowledgeable parser/compiler that would produce
enhanced code (color, type, style, font) indicating what type it thought each
variable was.  In fact each piece of code.  Color coding IDE's can be very
nice.  The problem is that the tool should include a language parser to follow
links and figure out what the code would do when run, and assign the type based
on that information.

Cross-reference generators are very nice also, but they would need to list each
variable by scope, so that the same name in independent contexts wouldn't get a
single coverage.  And type of reference would be needed as well as location.  It
would be especially important to note the locations of definitions and of
redefinition.

It would also be nice to have a pretty print program, provided that it was
flexible enough to include the style that I prefer.  I'm sure that others feel
the same way, but with a different style in mind.

And, of course, an html listing of the color coded results.  And ...

It would be a nice tool.  Looks like a bit of a project, too.

Aleksi Niemel wrote:

> > The lint programs for Python don't work very well, so it is
> > likely that it will be hard to write a useful lint program
> > for Ruby.
>
> lint type tool could be nice anyway. But I imagine the tool have to have
> hard time trying to figure out whether I'm really creating a new variable or
> calling a method by accident etc.
>
> The tool could, however, try to give a hint I might have a spelling error
> when I'm writing NameeErorr instead of NameError. The trick could be to try
> to estimate psychological or "seen" difference between names, and require
> certain minimum. That way previous example would be warned to have an error.
> Or if it does not have an error, then the programmer should rename variables
> to mark clearly they're different names; and as a side effect the lint
> warning goes away too. That wouldn't be bad idea as it would help fellow
> coders also...
>
>         - Aleksi

-- (c) Charles Hixson
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