Lint for Java

This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. It does not describe an actual complete program. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; I have too many other projects of my own.

I do contract work for a living, which could include writing a program such as this. However, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project any way you please.

LINT is a program for C/C++ that points out potential errors in source programs, things that are formally syntactically correct, but which might do something different from what the programmer intended. We need something similar for Java. Here are some things it might warn you about:

Missing break in case clause. Default fallthough was a dangerous language feature of C that Java copied.
Variables declared but not used.
Expressions like this: secs << 32 | frac & 0xffffffffL; where the meaning of the code heavily hinges on the precise differences in operator precedence of operators other than +-*/.
Using an object name instead of the class name to qualify a static method invocation.
Using a method name with the same name as the class. It was probably intended as a constructor.
Checking switch statements for consistency. All the enumerated values of a set should be accounted for. Unfortunately the Java language does not yet provide a mechanism to group static final constants into enumeration sets.
Check for setting a temporary variable to a value that is never subsequently referenced.
Check that get/set methods do indeed get/set some information from the object.
Temporary variables that shadow instance or class variables.

CodeCompanion
Jlint
Lint

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