• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• OPTIONS AND LINT CHECKS
• NON LINT-CHECK OPTIONS
• EXTENDING LINT
• TODO
• BUGS
• AUTHOR

NAME

B::Lint - Perl lint

SYNOPSIS

perl -MO=Lint[,OPTIONS] foo.pl

DESCRIPTION

The B::Lint module is equivalent to an extended version of the -w option of perl. It is named after the program lint which carries out a similar process for C programs.

OPTIONS AND LINT CHECKS

Option words are separated by commas (not whitespace) and follow the usual conventions of compiler backend options. Following any options (indicated by a leading -) come lint check arguments. Each such argument (apart from the special all and none options) is a word representing one possible lint check (turning on that check) or is no-foo (turning off that check). Before processing the check arguments, a standard list of checks is turned on. Later options override earlier ones. Available options are:

• magic-diamond

  Produces a warning whenever the magic <> readline is used. Internally it uses perl's two-argument open which itself treats filenames with special characters specially. This could allow interestingly named files to have unexpected effects when reading.

    % touch 'rm *|'
    % perl -pe 1

  The above creates a file named rm *|. When perl opens it with <> it actually executes the shell program rm * . This makes <> dangerous to use carelessly.

• context

  Produces a warning whenever an array is used in an implicit scalar context. For example, both of the lines

      $foo = length(@bar);
      $foo = @bar;

  will elicit a warning. Using an explicit scalar() silences the warning. For example,

      $foo = scalar(@bar);

• implicit-read and implicit-write

  These options produce a warning whenever an operation implicitly reads or (respectively) writes to one of Perl's special variables. For example, implicit-read will warn about these:

      /foo/;

  and implicit-write will warn about these:

      s/foo/bar/;

  Both implicit-read and implicit-write warn about this:

      for (@a) { ... }

• bare-subs

  This option warns whenever a bareword is implicitly quoted, but is also the name of a subroutine in the current package. Typical mistakes that it will trap are:

      use constant foo => 'bar';
      @a = ( foo => 1 );
      $b{foo} = 2;

  Neither of these will do what a naive user would expect.

• dollar-underscore

  This option warns whenever $_ is used either explicitly anywhere or as the implicit argument of a print statement.

• private-names

  This option warns on each use of any variable, subroutine or method name that lives in a non-current package but begins with an underscore ("_"). Warnings aren't issued for the special case of the single character name "_" by itself (e.g. $_ and @_ ).

• undefined-subs

  This option warns whenever an undefined subroutine is invoked. This option will only catch explicitly invoked subroutines such as foo() and not indirect invocations such as &$subref() or $obj->meth() . Note that some programs or modules delay definition of subs until runtime by means of the AUTOLOAD mechanism.

• regexp-variables

  This option warns whenever one of the regexp variables $` , $& or $' is used. Any occurrence of any of these variables in your program can slow your whole program down. See perlre for details.

• all

  Turn all warnings on.

• none

  Turn all warnings off.

NON LINT-CHECK OPTIONS

• -u Package

  Normally, Lint only checks the main code of the program together with all subs defined in package main. The -u option lets you include other package names whose subs are then checked by Lint.

EXTENDING LINT

Lint can be extended by with plugins. Lint uses Module::Pluggable to find available plugins. Plugins are expected but not required to inform Lint of which checks they are adding.

The B::Lint->register_plugin( MyPlugin => \@new_checks ) method adds the list of @new_checks to the list of valid checks. If your module wasn't loaded by Module::Pluggable then your class name is added to the list of plugins.

You must create a match( \%checks ) method in your plugin class or one of its parents. It will be called on every op as a regular method call with a hash ref of checks as its parameter.

The class methods B::Lint->file and B::Lint->line contain the current filename and line number.

  package Sample;
  use B::Lint;
  B::Lint->register_plugin( Sample => [ 'good_taste' ] );

  sub match {
      my ( $op, $checks_href ) = shift @_;
      if ( $checks_href->{good_taste} ) {
          ...
      }
  }

TODO

• while(<FH>) stomps $_
• strict oo
• unchecked system calls
• more tests, validate against older perls

BUGS

This is only a very preliminary version.

AUTHOR

Malcolm Beattie, mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk.