gcc for Syntax Checking ¶-gnatsThe s stands for ‘syntax’.
Run GNAT in syntax checking only mode. For example, the command
$ gcc -c -gnats x.adb
compiles file x.adb in syntax-check-only mode. You can check a
series of files in a single command
, and can use wildcards to specify such a group of files.
Note that you must specify the -c (compile
only) flag in addition to the -gnats flag.
You may use other switches in conjunction with -gnats. In
particular, -gnatl and -gnatv are useful to control the
format of any generated error messages.
When the source file is empty or contains only empty lines and/or comments, the output is a warning:
$ gcc -c -gnats -x ada toto.txt toto.txt:1:01: warning: empty file, contains no compilation units $
Otherwise, the output is simply the error messages, if any. No object file or
ALI file is generated by a syntax-only compilation. Also, no units other
than the one specified are accessed. For example, if a unit X
‘with’s a unit Y, compiling unit X in syntax
check only mode does not access the source file containing unit
Y.
Normally, GNAT allows only a single unit in a source file. However, this
restriction does not apply in syntax-check-only mode, and it is possible
to check a file containing multiple compilation units concatenated
together. This is primarily used by the gnatchop utility
(Renaming Files with gnatchop).