Silently checking whether diagnostics would occur

[Kaveh R. Ghazi]

 > From: Joern Rennecke <amylaar@cygnus.co.uk>
 > 
 > > So rather than do a complete restructuring of the format checking
 > > function, I though it would be much easier and cleaner to be able to
 > > call the checks conceptually like this:
 > > 
 > >  > check_diagnostics_silently = 1;  /* new global vars */
 > >  > diagnostic_occurred = 0;
 > 
 > Simpler to implement the change, but cleaner?
 > 
 > I can see it now.  Somewhere down the line, someone uses this
 > format checking in another utility function.  That function gets
 > called by another utility function under certain circumstances.
 > That function is then used by some piece of format-checking code.
 > 
 > After a few month of debugging, someone figures out why certain programs
 > just won't show any format warnings beyond some point even if there are
 > more problems left, and invents a stack for these global variables in
 > a static array.
 > 
 > The array overflows for another set of programs.  It is replaced with
 > a linked list of malloced structures.
 > 
 > Some time later, other programs are seen to cause the compiler to gobble
 > up all available memory the memory while parsing, making the host grind
 > to a halt, because the mallocing of structures causes a memory leak
 > when doing error recovery.
 > So we sprinkle a few strategically garbage collector calls into the
 > parser.
 > 
 > However, now some other data structures that should be live throughout the
 > parsing stage will be freed prematurely...

Okay, you've convinced me. :-)

I'll do it another way.

--
Kaveh R. Ghazi			Engagement Manager / Project Services
ghazi@caip.rutgers.edu		Qwest Internet Solutions