[Numpy-discussion] Toward a numpy build with warning: handling unused variable

[Charles R Harris]

On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 5:25 AM, David Cournapeau <
david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:

> Hi,
>
>    I have recently tried various warning flags with numpy, and already
> discover
> several potential errors in the C code. Now, because of the huge amount of
> warning
> we get with e.g. -W -Wall, it would be nice to clean the code for this
> kind of warning 'level' because we have a huge amount of garbage right now
> at this level.
> One big proportion of warning with -W is the unused variable, which happens
> with the dummy/self variable in the
> typical C functions.
>
> I know of two ways to handle this:
>    - the simple: use the variable in some way, e.g. Add a (void)dummy;
> in the function code. Problem: it is not really nice, and if later you
> want to use the variable, it may hide other useful warnings, although I
> am not sure about the later.
>    - more sophisticated way: using compiler specific handling (gcc
> attribute) + mangling:
>
> http://sourcefrog.net/weblog/software/languages/C/unused.html
>
> It is more complicated, is compiler specific, but it prevents accidental
> use of the variable (thanks to the mangling). The compiler-specific is
> not that much of a problem IMHO, since this is for warnings (and most of
> use use gcc ?).
>
> What do people think ? If nobody has anything against it, I will prepare a
> patch to support this.
>

I say leave these warnings alone. If nothing else, they point to possible
cleanups in some future refactoring.

Chuck
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