Options to Request or Suppress Warnings
=======================================

   Warnings are diagnostic messages that report constructions which are
not inherently erroneous but which are risky or suggest there may have
been an error.

   You can request many specific warnings with options beginning `-W',
for example `-Wimplicit' to request warnings on implicit declarations.
Each of these specific warning options also has a negative form
beginning `-Wno-' to turn off warnings; for example, `-Wno-implicit'.
This manual lists only one of the two forms, whichever is not the
default.

   These options control the amount and kinds of warnings produced by
GNU CC:

`-fsyntax-only'
     Check the code for syntax errors, but don't do anything beyond
     that.

`-pedantic'
     Issue all the warnings demanded by strict ANSI standard C; reject
     all programs that use forbidden extensions.

     Valid ANSI standard C programs should compile properly with or
     without this option (though a rare few will require `-ansi').
     However, without this option, certain GNU extensions and
     traditional C features are supported as well.  With this option,
     they are rejected.

     `-pedantic' does not cause warning messages for use of the
     alternate keywords whose names begin and end with `__'.  Pedantic
     warnings are also disabled in the expression that follows
     `__extension__'.  However, only system header files should use
     these escape routes; application programs should avoid them.
     See Alternate Keywords.

     This option is not intended to be useful; it exists only to satisfy
     pedants who would otherwise claim that GNU CC fails to support the
     ANSI standard.

     Some users try to use `-pedantic' to check programs for strict ANSI
     C conformance.  They soon find that it does not do quite what they
     want: it finds some non-ANSI practices, but not all--only those
     for which ANSI C *requires* a diagnostic.

     A feature to report any failure to conform to ANSI C might be
     useful in some instances, but would require considerable
     additional work and would be quite different from `-pedantic'.  We
     recommend, rather, that users take advantage of the extensions of
     GNU C and disregard the limitations of other compilers.  Aside
     from certain supercomputers and obsolete small machines, there is
     less and less reason ever to use any other C compiler other than
     for bootstrapping GNU CC.

`-pedantic-errors'
     Like `-pedantic', except that errors are produced rather than
     warnings.

`-w'
     Inhibit all warning messages.

`-Wno-import'
     Inhibit warning messages about the use of `#import'.

`-Wchar-subscripts'
     Warn if an array subscript has type `char'.  This is a common cause
     of error, as programmers often forget that this type is signed on
     some machines.

`-Wcomment'
     Warn whenever a comment-start sequence `/*' appears in a comment.

`-Wformat'
     Check calls to `printf' and `scanf', etc., to make sure that the
     arguments supplied have types appropriate to the format string
     specified.

`-Wimplicit'
     Warn whenever a function or parameter is implicitly declared.

`-Wparentheses'
     Warn if parentheses are omitted in certain contexts, such as when
     there is an assignment in a context where a truth value is
     expected, or when operators are nested whose precedence people
     often get confused about.

`-Wreturn-type'
     Warn whenever a function is defined with a return-type that
     defaults to `int'.  Also warn about any `return' statement with no
     return-value in a function whose return-type is not `void'.

`-Wswitch'
     Warn whenever a `switch' statement has an index of enumeral type
     and lacks a `case' for one or more of the named codes of that
     enumeration.  (The presence of a `default' label prevents this
     warning.)  `case' labels outside the enumeration range also
     provoke warnings when this option is used.

`-Wtrigraphs'
     Warn if any trigraphs are encountered (assuming they are enabled).

`-Wunused'
     Warn whenever a variable is unused aside from its declaration,
     whenever a function is declared static but never defined, whenever
     a label is declared but not used, and whenever a statement
     computes a result that is explicitly not used.

     To suppress this warning for an expression, simply cast it to
     void.  For unused variables and parameters, use the `unused'
     attribute (see Variable Attributes.).

`-Wuninitialized'
     An automatic variable is used without first being initialized.

     These warnings are possible only in optimizing compilation,
     because they require data flow information that is computed only
     when optimizing.  If you don't specify `-O', you simply won't get
     these warnings.

     These warnings occur only for variables that are candidates for
     register allocation.  Therefore, they do not occur for a variable
     that is declared `volatile', or whose address is taken, or whose
     size is other than 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes.  Also, they do not occur for
     structures, unions or arrays, even when they are in registers.

     Note that there may be no warning about a variable that is used
     only to compute a value that itself is never used, because such
     computations may be deleted by data flow analysis before the
     warnings are printed.

     These warnings are made optional because GNU CC is not smart
     enough to see all the reasons why the code might be correct
     despite appearing to have an error.  Here is one example of how
     this can happen:

          {
            int x;
            switch (y)
              {
              case 1: x = 1;
                break;
              case 2: x = 4;
                break;
              case 3: x = 5;
              }
            foo (x);
          }

     If the value of `y' is always 1, 2 or 3, then `x' is always
     initialized, but GNU CC doesn't know this.  Here is another common
     case:

          {
            int save_y;
            if (change_y) save_y = y, y = new_y;
            ...
            if (change_y) y = save_y;
          }

     This has no bug because `save_y' is used only if it is set.

     Some spurious warnings can be avoided if you declare all the
     functions you use that never return as `noreturn'.  *Note Function
     Attributes::.

`-Wenum-clash'
     Warn about conversion between different enumeration types.  (C++
     only).

`-Wreorder (C++ only)'
     Warn when the order of member initializers given in the code does
     not match the order in which they must be executed.  For instance:

          struct A {
            int i;
            int j;
            A(): j (0), i (1) { }
          };

     Here the compiler will warn that the member initializers for `i'
     and `j' will be rearranged to match the declaration order of the
     members.

`-Wtemplate-debugging'
     When using templates in a C++ program, warn if debugging is not yet
     fully available (C++ only).

`-Wall'
     All of the above `-W' options combined.  These are all the options
     which pertain to usage that we recommend avoiding and that we
     believe is easy to avoid, even in conjunction with macros.

   The remaining `-W...' options are not implied by `-Wall' because
they warn about constructions that we consider reasonable to use, on
occasion, in clean programs.

`-W'
     Print extra warning messages for these events:

        * A nonvolatile automatic variable might be changed by a call to
          `longjmp'.  These warnings as well are possible only in
          optimizing compilation.

          The compiler sees only the calls to `setjmp'.  It cannot know
          where `longjmp' will be called; in fact, a signal handler
          could call it at any point in the code.  As a result, you may
          get a warning even when there is in fact no problem because
          `longjmp' cannot in fact be called at the place which would
          cause a problem.

        * A function can return either with or without a value.
          (Falling off the end of the function body is considered
          returning without a value.)  For example, this function would
          evoke such a warning:

               foo (a)
               {
                 if (a > 0)
                   return a;
               }

        * An expression-statement or the left-hand side of a comma
          expression contains no side effects.  To suppress the
          warning, cast the unused expression to void.  For example, an
          expression such as `x[i,j]' will cause a warning, but
          `x[(void)i,j]' will not.

        * An unsigned value is compared against zero with `<' or `<='.

        * A comparison like `x<=y<=z' appears; this is equivalent to
          `(x<=y ? 1 : 0) <= z', which is a different interpretation
          from that of ordinary mathematical notation.

        * Storage-class specifiers like `static' are not the first
          things in a declaration.  According to the C Standard, this
          usage is obsolescent.

        * If `-Wall' or `-Wunused' is also specified, warn about unused
          arguments.

        * An aggregate has a partly bracketed initializer.  For
          example, the following code would evoke such a warning,
          because braces are missing around the initializer for `x.h':

               struct s { int f, g; };
               struct t { struct s h; int i; };
               struct t x = { 1, 2, 3 };

`-Wtraditional'
     Warn about certain constructs that behave differently in
     traditional and ANSI C.

        * Macro arguments occurring within string constants in the
          macro body.  These would substitute the argument in
          traditional C, but are part of the constant in ANSI C.

        * A function declared external in one block and then used after
          the end of the block.

        * A `switch' statement has an operand of type `long'.

`-Wshadow'
     Warn whenever a local variable shadows another local variable.

`-Wid-clash-LEN'
     Warn whenever two distinct identifiers match in the first LEN
     characters.  This may help you prepare a program that will compile
     with certain obsolete, brain-damaged compilers.

`-Wlarger-than-LEN'
     Warn whenever an object of larger than LEN bytes is defined.

`-Wpointer-arith'
     Warn about anything that depends on the "size of" a function type
     or of `void'.  GNU C assigns these types a size of 1, for
     convenience in calculations with `void *' pointers and pointers to
     functions.

`-Wbad-function-cast'
     Warn whenever a function call is cast to a non-matching type.  For
     example, warn if `int malloc()' is cast to `anything *'.

`-Wcast-qual'
     Warn whenever a pointer is cast so as to remove a type qualifier
     from the target type.  For example, warn if a `const char *' is
     cast to an ordinary `char *'.

`-Wcast-align'
     Warn whenever a pointer is cast such that the required alignment
     of the target is increased.  For example, warn if a `char *' is
     cast to an `int *' on machines where integers can only be accessed
     at two- or four-byte boundaries.

`-Wwrite-strings'
     Give string constants the type `const char[LENGTH]' so that
     copying the address of one into a non-`const' `char *' pointer
     will get a warning.  These warnings will help you find at compile
     time code that can try to write into a string constant, but only
     if you have been very careful about using `const' in declarations
     and prototypes.  Otherwise, it will just be a nuisance; this is
     why we did not make `-Wall' request these warnings.

`-Wconversion'
     Warn if a prototype causes a type conversion that is different
     from what would happen to the same argument in the absence of a
     prototype.  This includes conversions of fixed point to floating
     and vice versa, and conversions changing the width or signedness
     of a fixed point argument except when the same as the default
     promotion.

     Also, warn if a negative integer constant expression is implicitly
     converted to an unsigned type.  For example, warn about the
     assignment `x = -1' if `x' is unsigned.  But do not warn about
     explicit casts like `(unsigned) -1'.

`-Waggregate-return'
     Warn if any functions that return structures or unions are defined
     or called.  (In languages where you can return an array, this also
     elicits a warning.)

`-Wstrict-prototypes'
     Warn if a function is declared or defined without specifying the
     argument types.  (An old-style function definition is permitted
     without a warning if preceded by a declaration which specifies the
     argument types.)

`-Wmissing-prototypes'
     Warn if a global function is defined without a previous prototype
     declaration.  This warning is issued even if the definition itself
     provides a prototype.  The aim is to detect global functions that
     fail to be declared in header files.

`-Wmissing-declarations'
     Warn if a global function is defined without a previous
     declaration.  Do so even if the definition itself provides a
     prototype.  Use this option to detect global functions that are
     not declared in header files.

`-Wredundant-decls'
     Warn if anything is declared more than once in the same scope,
     even in cases where multiple declaration is valid and changes
     nothing.

`-Wnested-externs'
     Warn if an `extern' declaration is encountered within an function.

`-Winline'
     Warn if a function can not be inlined, and either it was declared
     as inline, or else the `-finline-functions' option was given.

`-Woverloaded-virtual'
     Warn when a derived class function declaration may be an error in
     defining a virtual function (C++ only).  In a derived class, the
     definitions of virtual functions must match the type signature of a
     virtual function declared in the base class.  With this option, the
     compiler warns when you define a function with the same name as a
     virtual function, but with a type signature that does not match any
     declarations from the base class.

`-Wsynth (C++ only)'
     Warn when g++'s synthesis behavior does not match that of cfront.
     For instance:

          struct A {
            operator int ();
            A& operator = (int);
          };
          
          main ()
          {
            A a,b;
            a = b;
          }

     In this example, g++ will synthesize a default `A& operator =
     (const A&);', while cfront will use the user-defined `operator ='.

`-Werror'
     Make all warnings into errors.