PC-Lint 101: What does "Location cited in prior message" mean?

[Note: this article was automatically created from a blog feed. The original post can be found at http://www.riverblade.co.uk/blog.php?archive=2009_01_01_archive.xml#4365550481929190480].

If you are new to PC-Lint, you may have wondered what message 830 ("Location cited in prior message") means, and - given that such messages can add greatly to the overall issue count in your file or project - what (if any) use are they?

Quite simply, message 830 identifies a location in the codebase which relates to the preceding message (or issue, in Visual Lint terminology).

For example, if you analyse the code shown below (lines with lint issues are highlighted in yellow):

If you examine the contents of the lines referenced in the 830 messages, you will find that they are where the functions referred to in the "Ignoring return value of function" messages are defined:

The beauty of this within the development environment is of course that by double clicking on the "Location cited in prior message" issue, you will be taken directly to the definition of the function concerned, so you can easily view its definition and (in this context) see what it returns.

Incidentally, there is a similar message - 831 ("Reference cited in prior message") - which identifies other supporting information for a message. It works in exactly the same way as 830.

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)