Re: format called for effect

[Raja R Harinath <harinath@cs.umn.edu>]

Hi,

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Raja R Harinath <harinath@cs.umn.edu> writes:
>
>> It doesn't.  And that seems to be the point of the overly cleverly
>> worded warning.  It think the warning says
>>
>>   "you want a side-effect there, but 'format' ain't gonna do it for you"
>
> Yeah, probably.  It's a kinda strange thing to warn about -- did
> anyone ever think that doing a `format' would have a side effect?

It makes sense to warn in the case where you call to a pure (no
side-effects) function, and then discard the value.  Apparently, the
compiler figured out that the call to 'format' would be an expensive
no-op in that context, and that's why it complained.

It is just that the wording of the warning is wierd enough that you
put the blame on the callee (by worrying about 'format' in this case),
rather than the call site, where the problem actually is.

- Hari
-- 
Raja R Harinath ------------------------------ harinath@cs.umn.edu