The Voidcaster is a static analysis tool which tells you when to cast a function
call to void because you are ignoring the return value, or not to cast a
function which doesn't return a value to void.
It outputs a warning for every missing/superfluous cast encountered.
Alternatively, it can run in interactive mode, where it's sufficient to answer
a set of you're not casting this to void; should I cast it for you? prompts
and the source files are modified accordingly.
Report bugs on Github! http://github.com/RavuAlHemio/voidcaster
One word: libclang. Which is a bit unfortunate, because LLVM is quite a big dependency.
If your organization prescribes casting ignored return values to void, you can
benefit from this tool in three ways:
-
If you disagree with the rule, you can spend more time programming and debugging and less time hunting down cases of not-explicitly ignored return values.
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If you agree with the rule, you can quickly obtain a concise list of cases where you forgot, and think again whether you care about the return value or not.
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If you enforce the rule, you can obtain an at-a-glance list of where the rule was violated.
I am a student and former junior teaching assistant at TU Wien (also known as Technische Universität Wien and to locals as die TU).