Lint for Java

Disclaimer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project. Everything I have prepared to help you is right here.

This project outline is not like the artificial, tidy little problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer by profession, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavour.

Please do not email me about this project without reading the disclaimer above.

C++

Missing break in case clause. Default fallthough was a dangerous language feature of C that Java copied.

Variables declared but not used.

Expressions like this: secs << 32 | frac & 0xffffffffL; where the meaning of the code heavily hinges on the precise differences in operator precedence of operators other than +-*/.

Using an object name instead of the class name to qualify a static method invocation.

Using a method name with the same name as the class. It was probably intended as a constructor.

Checking switch statements for consistency. All the enumerated values of a set should be accounted for. Unfortunately the Java language does not yet provide a mechanism to group static final constants into enumeration sets.

Check for setting a temporary variable to a value that is never subsequently referenced.

Check that get/set methods do indeed get/set some information from the object.

Temporary variables that shadow instance or class variables.

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This page is posted
on the web at:

http://mindprod.com/project/lint.html

Optional Replicator mirror
of mindprod.com
on local hard disk J:

J:\mindprod\project\lint.html

Please read the feedback from other visitors, or send your own feedback about the site.
Contact Roedy. Please feel free to link to this page without explicit permission.

Canadian Mind Products
IP:[65.110.21.43]
Your face IP:[18.224.59.138]

Feedback

You are visitor number