Skip to content

Add support for -Wshadow #888

Description

@ehaas

From the GCC docs (omitting objective-c info) at https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Warning-Options.html:

-Wshadow
Warn whenever a local variable or type declaration shadows another variable, parameter, type, class member (in C++), or instance variable (in Objective-C) or whenever a built-in function is shadowed. Note that in C++, the compiler warns if a local variable shadows an explicit typedef, but not if it shadows a struct/class/enum. If this warning is enabled, it includes also all instances of local shadowing. This means that -Wno-shadow=local and -Wno-shadow=compatible-local are ignored when -Wshadow is used. Same as -Wshadow=global.

-Wshadow=global
Warn for any shadowing. Same as -Wshadow.

-Wshadow=local
Warn when a local variable shadows another local variable or parameter.

-Wshadow=compatible-local
Warn when a local variable shadows another local variable or parameter whose type is compatible with that of the shadowing variable. In C++, type compatibility here means the type of the shadowing variable can be converted to that of the shadowed variable. The creation of this flag (in addition to -Wshadow=local) is based on the idea that when a local variable shadows another one of incompatible type, it is most likely intentional, not a bug or typo, as shown in the following example:

for (SomeIterator i = SomeObj.begin(); i != SomeObj.end(); ++i)
{
for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
{
...
}
...
}
Since the two variable i in the example above have incompatible types, enabling only -Wshadow=compatible-local does not emit a warning. Because their types are incompatible, if a programmer accidentally uses one in place of the other, type checking is expected to catch that and emit an error or warning. Use of this flag instead of -Wshadow=local can possibly reduce the number of warnings triggered by intentional shadowing. Note that this also means that shadowing const char *i by char *i does not emit a warning.

This warning is also enabled by -Wshadow=local.

Activity

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    enhancementNew feature or request

    Projects

    No projects

      Milestone

      No milestone

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions