GNU Info
(gcc-300.info)Warning Options
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
GCC:
`-fsyntax-only'
Check the code for syntax errors, but don't do anything beyond
that.
`-pedantic'
Issue all the warnings demanded by strict ISO C and ISO C++;
reject all programs that use forbidden extensions, and some other
programs that do not follow ISO C and ISO C++. For ISO C, follows
the version of the ISO C standard specified by any `-std' option
used.
Valid ISO C and ISO C++ programs should compile properly with or
without this option (though a rare few will require `-ansi' or a
`-std' option specifying the required version of ISO C). However,
without this option, certain GNU extensions and traditional C and
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.
Note: Alternate Keywords.
Some users try to use `-pedantic' to check programs for strict ISO
C conformance. They soon find that it does not do quite what they
want: it finds some non-ISO practices, but not all--only those for
which ISO C _requires_ a diagnostic, and some others for which
diagnostics have been added.
A feature to report any failure to conform to ISO C might be
useful in some instances, but would require considerable
additional work and would be quite different from `-pedantic'. We
don't have plans to support such a feature in the near future.
Where the standard specified with `-std' represents a GNU extended
dialect of C, such as `gnu89' or `gnu99', there is a corresponding
"base standard", the version of ISO C on which the GNU extended
dialect is based. Warnings from `-pedantic' are given where they
are required by the base standard. (It would not make sense for
such warnings to be given only for features not in the specified
GNU C dialect, since by definition the GNU dialects of C include
all features the compiler supports with the given option, and
there would be nothing to warn about.)
`-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, or whenever a Backslash-Newline 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, and that the conversions specified in the format string
make sense. This includes standard functions, and others
specified by format attributes (Note: Function Attributes), in
the `printf', `scanf', `strftime' and `strfmon' (an X/Open
extension, not in the C standard) families.
The formats are checked against the format features supported by
GNU libc version 2.2. These include all ISO C89 and C99 features,
as well as features from the Single Unix Specification and some
BSD and GNU extensions. Other library implementations may not
support all these features; GCC does not support warning about
features that go beyond a particular library's limitations.
However, if `-pedantic' is used with `-Wformat', warnings will be
given about format features not in the selected standard version
(but not for `strfmon' formats, since those are not in any version
of the C standard). Note: Options Controlling C Dialect.
`-Wformat' is included in `-Wall'. For more control over some
aspects of format checking, the options `-Wno-format-y2k',
`-Wno-format-extra-args', `-Wformat-nonliteral',
`-Wformat-security' and `-Wformat=2' are available, but are not
included in `-Wall'.
`-Wno-format-y2k'
If `-Wformat' is specified, do not warn about `strftime' formats
which may yield only a two-digit year.
`-Wno-format-extra-args'
If `-Wformat' is specified, do not warn about excess arguments to a
`printf' or `scanf' format function. The C standard specifies
that such arguments are ignored.
`-Wformat-nonliteral'
If `-Wformat' is specified, also warn if the format string is not a
string literal and so cannot be checked, unless the format function
takes its format arguments as a `va_list'.
`-Wformat-security'
If `-Wformat' is specified, also warn about uses of format
functions that represent possible security problems. At present,
this warns about calls to `printf' and `scanf' functions where the
format string is not a string literal and there are no format
arguments, as in `printf (foo);'. This may be a security hole if
the format string came from untrusted input and contains `%n'.
(This is currently a subset of what `-Wformat-nonliteral' warns
about, but in future warnings may be added to `-Wformat-security'
that are not included in `-Wformat-nonliteral'.)
`-Wformat=2'
Enable `-Wformat' plus format checks not included in `-Wformat'.
Currently equivalent to `-Wformat -Wformat-nonliteral
-Wformat-security'.
`-Wimplicit-int'
Warn when a declaration does not specify a type.
`-Wimplicit-function-declaration'
`-Werror-implicit-function-declaration'
Give a warning (or error) whenever a function is used before being
declared.
`-Wimplicit'
Same as `-Wimplicit-int' and `-Wimplicit-function-declaration'.
`-Wmain'
Warn if the type of `main' is suspicious. `main' should be a
function with external linkage, returning int, taking either zero
arguments, two, or three arguments of appropriate types.
`-Wmissing-braces'
Warn if an aggregate or union initializer is not fully bracketed.
In the following example, the initializer for `a' is not fully
bracketed, but that for `b' is fully bracketed.
int a[2][2] = { 0, 1, 2, 3 };
int b[2][2] = { { 0, 1 }, { 2, 3 } };
`-Wmultichar'
Warn if a multicharacter constant (`'FOOF'') is used. Usually they
indicate a typo in the user's code, as they have
implementation-defined values, and should not be used in portable
code.
`-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.
Also warn about constructions where there may be confusion to which
`if' statement an `else' branch belongs. Here is an example of
such a case:
{
if (a)
if (b)
foo ();
else
bar ();
}
In C, every `else' branch belongs to the innermost possible `if'
statement, which in this example is `if (b)'. This is often not
what the programmer expected, as illustrated in the above example
by indentation the programmer chose. When there is the potential
for this confusion, GCC will issue a warning when this flag is
specified. To eliminate the warning, add explicit braces around
the innermost `if' statement so there is no way the `else' could
belong to the enclosing `if'. The resulting code would look like
this:
{
if (a)
{
if (b)
foo ();
else
bar ();
}
}
`-Wsequence-point'
Warn about code that may have undefined semantics because of
violations of sequence point rules in the C standard.
The C standard defines the order in which expressions in a C
program are evaluated in terms of "sequence points", which
represent a partial ordering between the execution of parts of the
program: those executed before the sequence point, and those
executed after it. These occur after the evaluation of a full
expression (one which is not part of a larger expression), after
the evaluation of the first operand of a `&&', `||', `? :' or `,'
(comma) operator, before a function is called (but after the
evaluation of its arguments and the expression denoting the called
function), and in certain other places. Other than as expressed
by the sequence point rules, the order of evaluation of
subexpressions of an expression is not specified. All these rules
describe only a partial order rather than a total order, since,
for example, if two functions are called within one expression
with no sequence point between them, the order in which the
functions are called is not specified. However, the standards
committee have ruled that function calls do not overlap.
It is not specified when between sequence points modifications to
the values of objects take effect. Programs whose behavior
depends on this have undefined behavior; the C standard specifies
that "Between the previous and next sequence point an object shall
have its stored value modified at most once by the evaluation of
an expression. Furthermore, the prior value shall be read only to
determine the value to be stored.". If a program breaks these
rules, the results on any particular implementation are entirely
unpredictable.
Examples of code with undefined behavior are `a = a++;', `a[n] =
b[n++]' and `a[i++] = i;'. Some more complicated cases are not
diagnosed by this option, and it may give an occasional false
positive result, but in general it has been found fairly effective
at detecting this sort of problem in programs.
The present implementation of this option only works for C
programs. A future implementation may also work for C++ programs.
There is some controversy over the precise meaning of the sequence
point rules in subtle cases. Links to papers with alternative
formal definitions and other related discussions may be found on
our readings page `http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html'.
`-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'.
For C++, a function without return type always produces a
diagnostic message, even when `-Wno-return-type' is specified.
The only exceptions are `main' and functions defined in system
headers.
`-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 that might change the
meaning of the program (trigraphs within comments are not warned
about).
`-Wunused-function'
Warn whenever a static function is declared but not defined or a
non\-inline static function is unused.
`-Wunused-label'
Warn whenever a label is declared but not used.
To suppress this warning use the `unused' attribute (Note:
Variable Attributes).
`-Wunused-parameter'
Warn whenever a function parameter is unused aside from its
declaration.
To suppress this warning use the `unused' attribute (Note:
Variable Attributes).
`-Wunused-variable'
Warn whenever a local variable or non-constant static variable is
unused aside from its declaration
To suppress this warning use the `unused' attribute (Note:
Variable Attributes).
`-Wunused-value'
Warn whenever a statement computes a result that is explicitly not
used.
To suppress this warning cast the expression to `void'.
`-Wunused'
All all the above `-Wunused' options combined.
In order to get a warning about an unused function parameter, you
must either specify `-W -Wunused' or separately specify
`-Wunused-parameter'.
`-Wuninitialized'
Warn if an automatic variable is used without first being
initialized or if a variable may be clobbered by a `setjmp' call.
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 GCC 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 GCC 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.
This option also warns when a non-volatile 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.
Some spurious warnings can be avoided if you declare all the
functions you use that never return as `noreturn'. Note: Function
Attributes.
`-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:
`-Wunknown-pragmas'
Warn when a #pragma directive is encountered which is not
understood by GCC. If this command line option is used, warnings
will even be issued for unknown pragmas in system header files.
This is not the case if the warnings were only enabled by the
`-Wall' command line option.
`-Wall'
All of the above `-W' options combined. This enables all the
warnings about constructions that some users consider
questionable, and that are easy to avoid (or modify to prevent the
warning), even in conjunction with macros.
`-Wsystem-headers'
Print warning messages for constructs found in system header files.
Warnings from system headers are normally suppressed, on the
assumption that they usually do not indicate real problems and
would only make the compiler output harder to read. Using this
command line option tells GCC to emit warnings from system headers
as if they occurred in user code. However, note that using
`-Wall' in conjunction with this option will _not_ warn about
unknown pragmas in system headers--for that, `-Wunknown-pragmas'
must also be used.
The following `-W...' options are not implied by `-Wall'. Some of
them warn about constructions that users generally do not consider
questionable, but which occasionally you might wish to check for;
others warn about constructions that are necessary or hard to avoid in
some cases, and there is no simple way to modify the code to suppress
the warning.
`-W'
Print extra warning messages for these events:
* 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.
* The return type of a function has a type qualifier such as
`const'. Such a type qualifier has no effect, since the
value returned by a function is not an lvalue. (But don't
warn about the GNU extension of `volatile void' return types.
That extension will be warned about if `-pedantic' is
specified.)
* If `-Wall' or `-Wunused' is also specified, warn about unused
arguments.
* A comparison between signed and unsigned values could produce
an incorrect result when the signed value is converted to
unsigned. (But don't warn if `-Wno-sign-compare' is also
specified.)
* 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 };
* An aggregate has an initializer which does not initialize all
members. For example, the following code would cause such a
warning, because `x.h' would be implicitly initialized to
zero:
struct s { int f, g, h; };
struct s x = { 3, 4 };
`-Wfloat-equal'
Warn if floating point values are used in equality comparisons.
The idea behind this is that sometimes it is convenient (for the
programmer) to consider floating-point values as approximations to
infinitely precise real numbers. If you are doing this, then you
need to compute (by analysing the code, or in some other way) the
maximum or likely maximum error that the computation introduces,
and allow for it when performing comparisons (and when producing
output, but that's a different problem). In particular, instead
of testing for equality, you would check to see whether the two
values have ranges that overlap; and this is done with the
relational operators, so equality comparisons are probably
mistaken.
`-Wtraditional (C only)'
Warn about certain constructs that behave differently in
traditional and ISO C. Also warn about ISO C constructs that have
no traditional C equivalent, and/or problematic constructs which
should be avoided.
* Macro parameters that appear within string literals in the
macro body. In traditional C macro replacement takes place
within string literals, but does not in ISO C.
* In traditional C, some preprocessor directives did not exist.
Traditional preprocessors would only consider a line to be a
directive if the `#' appeared in column 1 on the line.
Therefore `-Wtraditional' warns about directives that
traditional C understands but would ignore because the `#'
does not appear as the first character on the line. It also
suggests you hide directives like `#pragma' not understood by
traditional C by indenting them. Some traditional
implementations would not recognise `#elif', so it suggests
avoiding it altogether.
* A function-like macro that appears without arguments.
* The unary plus operator.
* The `U' integer constant suffix, or the `F' or `L' floating
point constant suffixes. (Traditional C does support the `L'
suffix on integer constants.) Note, these suffixes appear in
macros defined in the system headers of most modern systems,
e.g. the `_MIN'/`_MAX' macros in `<limits.h>'. Use of these
macros in user code might normally lead to spurious warnings,
however gcc's integrated preprocessor has enough context to
avoid warning in these cases.
* 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'.
* A non-`static' function declaration follows a `static' one.
This construct is not accepted by some traditional C
compilers.
* The ISO type of an integer constant has a different width or
signedness from its traditional type. This warning is only
issued if the base of the constant is ten. I.e. hexadecimal
or octal values, which typically represent bit patterns, are
not warned about.
* Usage of ISO string concatenation is detected.
* Initialization of automatic aggregates.
* Identifier conflicts with labels. Traditional C lacks a
separate namespace for labels.
* Initialization of unions. If the initializer is zero, the
warning is omitted. This is done under the assumption that
the zero initializer in user code appears conditioned on e.g.
`__STDC__' to avoid missing initializer warnings and relies
on default initialization to zero in the traditional C case.
* Conversions by prototypes between fixed/floating point values
and vice versa. The absence of these prototypes when
compiling with traditional C would cause serious problems.
This is a subset of the possible conversion warnings, for the
full set use `-Wconversion'.
`-Wundef'
Warn if an undefined identifier is evaluated in an `#if' directive.
`-Wshadow'
Warn whenever a local variable shadows another local variable,
parameter or global variable or whenever a built-in function is
shadowed.
`-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 (C only)'
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'
When compiling C, 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; when compiling
C++, warn about the deprecated conversion from string constants to
`char *'. 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'.
`-Wsign-compare'
Warn when a comparison between signed and unsigned values could
produce an incorrect result when the signed value is converted to
unsigned. This warning is also enabled by `-W'; to get the other
warnings of `-W' without this warning, use `-W -Wno-sign-compare'.
`-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 (C only)'
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 (C only)'
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.
`-Wmissing-noreturn'
Warn about functions which might be candidates for attribute
`noreturn'. Note these are only possible candidates, not absolute
ones. Care should be taken to manually verify functions actually
do not ever return before adding the `noreturn' attribute,
otherwise subtle code generation bugs could be introduced. You
will not get a warning for `main' in hosted C environments.
`-Wmissing-format-attribute'
If `-Wformat' is enabled, also warn about functions which might be
candidates for `format' attributes. Note these are only possible
candidates, not absolute ones. GCC will guess that `format'
attributes might be appropriate for any function that calls a
function like `vprintf' or `vscanf', but this might not always be
the case, and some functions for which `format' attributes are
appropriate may not be detected. This option has no effect unless
`-Wformat' is enabled (possibly by `-Wall').
`-Wpacked'
Warn if a structure is given the packed attribute, but the packed
attribute has no effect on the layout or size of the structure.
Such structures may be mis-aligned for little benefit. For
instance, in this code, the variable `f.x' in `struct bar' will be
misaligned even though `struct bar' does not itself have the
packed attribute:
struct foo {
int x;
char a, b, c, d;
} __attribute__((packed));
struct bar {
char z;
struct foo f;
};
`-Wpadded'
Warn if padding is included in a structure, either to align an
element of the structure or to align the whole structure.
Sometimes when this happens it is possible to rearrange the fields
of the structure to reduce the padding and so make the structure
smaller.
`-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 (C only)'
Warn if an `extern' declaration is encountered within a function.
`-Wunreachable-code'
Warn if the compiler detects that code will never be executed.
This option is intended to warn when the compiler detects that at
least a whole line of source code will never be executed, because
some condition is never satisfied or because it is after a
procedure that never returns.
It is possible for this option to produce a warning even though
there are circumstances under which part of the affected line can
be executed, so care should be taken when removing
apparently-unreachable code.
For instance, when a function is inlined, a warning may mean that
the line is unreachable in only one inlined copy of the function.
This option is not made part of `-Wall' because in a debugging
version of a program there is often substantial code which checks
correct functioning of the program and is, hopefully, unreachable
because the program does work. Another common use of unreachable
code is to provide behaviour which is selectable at compile-time.
`-Winline'
Warn if a function can not be inlined and it was declared as
inline.
`-Wlong-long'
Warn if `long long' type is used. This is default. To inhibit
the warning messages, use `-Wno-long-long'. Flags `-Wlong-long'
and `-Wno-long-long' are taken into account only when `-pedantic'
flag is used.
`-Wdisabled-optimization'
Warn if a requested optimization pass is disabled. This warning
does not generally indicate that there is anything wrong with your
code; it merely indicates that GCC's optimizers were unable to
handle the code effectively. Often, the problem is that your code
is too big or too complex; GCC will refuse to optimize programs
when the optimization itself is likely to take inordinate amounts
of time.
`-Werror'
Make all warnings into errors.
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