sparse(1) — Linux manual page

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sparse(1)                General Commands Manual               sparse(1)

NAME         top

       sparse - Semantic Parser for C

SYNOPSIS         top

       sparse [WARNING OPTIONS]... file.c

DESCRIPTION         top

       Sparse parses C source and looks for errors, producing warnings
       on standard error.

       Sparse accepts options controlling the set of warnings to
       generate.  To turn on warnings Sparse does not issue by default,
       use the corresponding warning option -Wsomething.  Sparse issues
       some warnings by default; to turn off those warnings, pass the
       negation of the associated warning option, -Wno-something.

WARNING OPTIONS         top

       -fmax-errors=COUNT
              Set the maximum number of displayed errors to COUNT, which
              should be a numerical value or 'unlimited'.  The default
              limit is 100.

       -fmax-warnings=COUNT
              Set the maximum number of displayed warnings to COUNT,
              which should be a numerical value or 'unlimited'.  The
              default limit is 100.

       -Wsparse-all
              Turn on all sparse warnings, except for those explicitly
              disabled via -Wno-something.

       -Wsparse-error
              Turn all sparse warnings into errors.

       -Waddress-space
              Warn about code which mixes pointers to different address
              spaces.

              Sparse allows an extended attribute
              __attribute__((address_space(id))) on pointers, which
              designates a pointer target in address space id (an
              identifier or a constant integer).  With -Waddress-space,
              Sparse treats pointers with identical target types but
              different address spaces as distinct types and will warn
              accordingly.

              Sparse will also warn on casts which remove the address
              space (casts to an integer type or to a plain pointer
              type). An exception to this is when the destination type
              is uintptr_t (or unsigned long) since such casts are often
              used to "get a pointer value representation in an integer
              type" and such values are independent of the address
              space.

              To override these warnings, use a type that includes
              __attribute__((force)).

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-address-space.

       -Wbitwise
              Warn about unsupported operations or type mismatches with
              restricted integer types.

              Sparse supports an extended attribute,
              __attribute__((bitwise)), which creates a new restricted
              integer type from a base integer type, distinct from the
              base integer type and from any other restricted integer
              type not declared in the same declaration or typedef.  For
              example, this allows programs to create typedefs for
              integer types with specific endianness.  With -Wbitwise,
              Sparse will warn on any use of a restricted type in
              arithmetic operations other than bitwise operations, and
              on any conversion of one restricted type into another,
              except via a cast that includes __attribute__((force)).

              __bitwise ends up being a "stronger integer separation",
              one that doesn't allow you to mix with non-bitwise
              integers, so now it's much harder to lose the type by
              mistake.

              __bitwise is for *unique types* that cannot be mixed with
              other types, and that you'd never want to just use as a
              random integer (the integer 0 is special, though, and gets
              silently accepted iirc - it's kind of like "NULL" for
              pointers). So "gfp_t" or the "safe endianness" types would
              be __bitwise: you can only operate on them by doing
              specific operations that know about *that* particular
              type.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-bitwise.

       -Wbitwise-pointer
              Same as -Wbitwise but for casts to or from pointers to
              bitwise types.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wcast-from-as
              Warn about casts which remove an address space from a
              pointer type.

              This is similar to -Waddress-space but will also warn on
              casts to unsigned long.

              Sparse does not issues these warnings by default.

       -Wcast-to-as
              Warn about casts which add an address space to a pointer
              type.

              A cast that includes __attribute__((force)) will suppress
              this warning.  No warning is generated if the original
              type is uintptr_t (or unsigned long).

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wcast-truncate
              Warn about casts that truncate constant values.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-cast-truncate.

       -Wconstant-suffix
              Warn if an integer constant is larger than the maximum
              representable value of the type indicated by its type
              suffix (if any). For example, on a system where ints are
              32-bit and longs 64-bit, the constant 0x100000000U is
              larger than can be represented by an unsigned int but fits
              in an unsigned long. So its type is unsigned long but this
              is not indicated by its suffix. In this case, the warning
              could be suppressed by using the suffix UL: 0x100000000UL.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wconstexpr-not-const
              Warn if a non-constant expression is encountered when
              really expecting a constant expression instead.
              Currently, this warns when initializing an object of
              static storage duration with an initializer which is not a
              constant expression.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wcontext
              Warn about potential errors in synchronization or other
              delimited contexts.

              Sparse supports several means of designating functions or
              statements that delimit contexts, such as synchronization.
              Functions with the extended attribute
              __attribute__((context(expression,in_context,out_context))
              require the context expression (for instance, a lock) to
              have the value in_context (a constant nonnegative integer)
              when called, and return with the value out_context (a
              constant nonnegative integer).  For APIs defined via
              macros, use the statement form
              __context__(expression,in_value,out_value) in the body of
              the macro.

              With -Wcontext Sparse will warn when it sees a function
              change the context without indicating this with a context
              attribute, either by decreasing a context below zero (such
              as by releasing a lock without acquiring it), or returning
              with a changed context (such as by acquiring a lock
              without releasing it).  Sparse will also warn about blocks
              of code which may potentially execute with different
              contexts.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-context.

       -Wdecl Warn about any non-static variable or function definition
              that has no previous declaration.

              Private symbols (functions and variables) internal to a
              given source file should use static, to allow additional
              compiler optimizations, allow detection of unused symbols,
              and prevent other code from relying on these internal
              symbols.  Public symbols used by other source files will
              need declarations visible to those other source files,
              such as in a header file.  All declarations should fall
              into one of these two categories.  Thus, with -Wdecl,
              Sparse warns about any symbol definition with neither
              static nor a declaration.  To fix this warning, declare
              private symbols static, and ensure that the files defining
              public symbols have the symbol declarations available
              first (such as by including the appropriate header file).

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-decl.

       -Wdeclaration-after-statement
              Warn about declarations that are not at the start of a
              block.

              These declarations are permitted in C99 but not in C89.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default only when the C
              dialect is C89 (i.e. -ansi or -std=c89).  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-declaration-after-statement.

       -Wdefault-bitfield-sign
              Warn about any bitfield with no explicit signedness.

              Bitfields have no standard-specified default signedness.
              (C99 6.7.2) A bitfield without an explicit signed or
              unsigned creates a portability problem for software that
              relies on the available range of values.  To fix this,
              specify the bitfield type as signed or unsigned
              explicitly.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wdesignated-init
              Warn about positional initialization of structs marked as
              requiring designated initializers.

              Sparse allows an attribute
              __attribute__((designated_init)) which marks a struct as
              requiring designated initializers.  Sparse will warn about
              positional initialization of a struct variable or struct
              literal of a type that has this attribute.

              Requiring designated initializers for a particular struct
              type will insulate code using that struct type from
              changes to the layout of the type, avoiding the need to
              change initializers for that type unless they initialize a
              removed or incompatibly changed field.

              Common examples of this type of struct include collections
              of function pointers for the implementations of a class of
              related operations, for which the default NULL for an
              unmentioned field in a designated initializer will
              correctly indicate the absence of that operation.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-designated-init.

       -Wdo-while
              Warn about do-while loops that do not delimit the loop
              body with braces.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wenum-mismatch
              Warn about the use of an expression of an incorrect enum
              type when initializing another enum type, assigning to
              another enum type, or passing an argument to a function
              which expects another enum type.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-enum-mismatch.

       -Wexternal-function-has-definition
              Warn about function definitions that are declared with
              external linkage.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-external-function-has-definition.

       -Wflexible-array-array
              Warn about arrays of structures containing a flexible
              array.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default. To turn them off,
              use -Wno-flexible-array-array.

       -Wflexible-array-nested
              Warn about structures containing a flexible array being
              contained into another structure, union or array.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wflexible-array-sizeof
              Warn about using the sizeof operator on a structure
              containing a flexible array, possibly recursively.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wflexible-array-union
              Enable the warnings regarding flexible arrays and unions.
              To have any effect, at least one of -Wflexible-array-
              array, -Wflexible-array-nested or -Wflexible-array-sizeof
              must also be enabled.

              Sparse does issue these warnings by default.

       -Winit-cstring
              Warn about initialization of a char array with a too long
              constant C string.

              If the size of the char array and the length of the string
              are the same, there is no space for the last nul char of
              the string in the array:

              char s[3] = "abc";

              If the array is used as a byte array, not as C string,
              this warning is just noise. However, if the array is
              passed to functions dealing with C string like printf(%s)
              and strcmp, it may cause a trouble.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wmemcpy-max-count
              Warn about call of memcpy(), memset(), copy_from_user(),
              or copy_to_user() with a large compile-time byte count.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default. To turn them off,
              use -Wno-memcpy-max-count.

              The limit can be changed with -fmemcpy-max-count=COUNT,
              the default being 100000.

       -Wnewline-eof
              Warn if the input file doesn't end with a newline.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-newline-eof.

       -Wnon-pointer-null
              Warn about the use of 0 as a NULL pointer.

              0 has integer type.  NULL has pointer type.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-non-pointer-null.

       -Wold-initializer
              Warn about the use of the pre-C99 GCC syntax for
              designated initializers.

              C99 provides a standard syntax for designated fields in
              struct or union initializers:

              struct structname var = { .field = value };

              GCC also has an old, non-standard syntax for designated
              initializers which predates C99:

              struct structname var = { field: value };

              Sparse will warn about the use of GCC's non-standard
              syntax for designated initializers.  To fix this warning,
              convert designated initializers to use the standard C99
              syntax.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-old-initializer.

       -Wone-bit-signed-bitfield
              Warn about any one-bit signed bitfields.

              A one-bit signed bitfield can only have the values 0 and
              -1, or with some compilers only 0; this results in
              unexpected behavior for programs which expected the
              ability to store 0 and 1.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-one-bit-signed-bitfield.

       -Wparen-string
              Warn about the use of a parenthesized string to initialize
              an array.

              Standard C syntax does not permit a parenthesized string
              as an array initializer.  GCC allows this syntax as an
              extension.  With -Wparen-string, Sparse will warn about
              this syntax.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wpast-deep-designator
              Warn when, in a initializer-list, a initializer with a
              deep (nested) designator is followed by a non-designated
              one.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wpointer-arith
              Warn about anything that depends on the sizeof a void or
              function type.

              C99 does not allow the sizeof operator to be applied to
              function types or to incomplete types such as void. GCC
              allows sizeof to be applied to these types as an extension
              and assigns these types a size of 1. With -pointer-arith,
              Sparse will warn about pointer arithmetic on void or
              function pointers, as well as expressions which directly
              apply the sizeof operator to void or function types.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wptr-subtraction-blows
              Warn when subtracting two pointers to a type with a non-
              power-of-two size.

              Subtracting two pointers to a given type gives a
              difference in terms of the number of items of that type.
              To generate this value, compilers will usually need to
              divide the difference by the size of the type, an
              potentially expensive operation for sizes other than
              powers of two.

              Code written using pointer subtraction can often use
              another approach instead, such as array indexing with an
              explicit array index variable, which may allow compilers
              to generate more efficient code.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wreturn-void
              Warn if a function with return type void returns a void
              expression.

              C99 permits this, and in some cases this allows for more
              generic code in macros that use typeof or take a type as a
              macro argument.  However, some programs consider this poor
              style, and those programs can use -Wreturn-void to get
              warnings about it.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wshadow
              Warn when declaring a symbol which shadows a declaration
              with the same name in an outer scope.

              Such declarations can lead to error-prone code.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wshift-count-negative
              Warn if a shift count is negative.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.

       -Wshift-count-overflow
              Warn if a shift count is bigger than the operand's width.

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.

       -Wsizeof-bool
              Warn when checking the sizeof a _Bool.

              C99 does not specify the size of a _Bool. GCC, by default,
              uses 1.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wtransparent-union
              Warn about any declaration using the GCC extension
              __attribute__((transparent_union)).

              Sparse issues these warnings by default.  To turn them
              off, use -Wno-transparent-union.

       -Wtypesign
              Warn when converting a pointer to an integer type into a
              pointer to an integer type with different signedness.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wundef
              Warn about preprocessor conditionals that use the value of
              an undefined preprocessor symbol.

              Standard C (C99 6.10.1) permits using the value of an
              undefined preprocessor symbol in preprocessor
              conditionals, and specifies it has a value of 0.  However,
              this behavior can lead to subtle errors.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default.

       -Wuniversal-initializer
              Do not suppress warnings caused by using '{ 0 }' instead
              of '{ }' on aggregate types, ignoring its special status
              as universal initializer.  The concerned warnings are, for
              example, those triggered by -Wdesignated-init or
              -Wnon-pointer-null.

              Sparse does not issue these warnings by default,
              processing '{ 0 }' the same as '{ }'.

       -Wunion-cast
              Warn on casts to union types.

              Sparse does not issues these warnings by default.

MISC OPTIONS         top

       --arch=ARCH
              Specify the target architecture.  For architectures having
              both a 32-bit and a 64-bit variant (mips, powerpc, riscv
              and sparc) the architecture name can be suffixed with 32
              or 64.

              The default architecture and size is the one of the
              machine used to build Sparse.

       -gcc-base-dir dir
              Look for compiler-provided system headers in dir/include/
              and dir/include-fixed/.

       -multiarch-dir dir
              Look for system headers in the multiarch subdirectory dir.
              The dir name would normally take the form of the target's
              normalized GNU triplet. (e.g. i386-linux-gnu).

       --os=OS
              Specify the target Operating System.  This only makes a
              few differences with the predefined types.  The accepted
              values are: linux, unix, freebsd, netbsd, opensd, sunos,
              darwin and cygwin.

              The default OS is the one of the machine used to build
              Sparse if it can be detected, otherwise some generic
              settings are used.

DEBUG OPTIONS         top

       -fmem-report
              Report some statistics about memory allocation used by the
              tool.

OTHER OPTIONS         top

       -fdiagnostic-prefix[=PREFIX]
              Prefix all diagnostics by the given PREFIX, followed by ":
              ".  If no one is given "sparse" is used.  The default is
              to not use a prefix at all.

       -fmemcpy-max-count=COUNT
              Set the limit for the warnings given by -Wmemcpy-max-
              count.  A COUNT of 'unlimited' or '0' will effectively
              disable the warning.  The default limit is 100000.

       -ftabstop=WIDTH
              Set the distance between tab stops.  This helps sparse
              report correct column numbers in warnings or errors.  If
              the value is less than 1 or greater than 100, the option
              is ignored.  The default is 8.

       -f[no-]unsigned-bitfields, -f[no-]signed-bitfields
              Determine the signedness of bitfields declared without an
              explicit sign ('signed' or 'unsigned').  By default such
              bitfields are signed, like others plain integers.

       -f[no-]unsigned-char, -f[no-]signed-char
              Let plain 'char' be unsigned or signed.  By default chars
              are signed.

SEE ALSO         top

       cgcc(1)

HOMEPAGE         top

       https://sparse.docs.kernel.org

MAILING LIST         top

       linux-sparse@vger.kernel.org

CONTRIBUTING AND REPORTING BUGS         top

       Submission of patches and reporting of bugs, as well as
       discussions related to Sparse, should be done via the mailing
       list (linux-sparse@vger.kernel.org) where the development and
       maintenance is primarily done.  You do not have to be subscribed
       to the list to send a message there.

       Bugs can also be reported and tracked via the Linux kernel's
       bugzilla:
       http://bugzilla.kernel.org/enter_bug.cgi?component=Sparse&product=Tools
       .

DOCUMENTATION         top

       More documentation about Sparse can be found at
       https://sparse.docs.kernel.org

AUTHORS         top

       Sparse was started by Linus Torvalds.  The complete list of
       contributors can be find at
       https://www.openhub.net/p/sparse/contributors .

       Luc Van Oostenryck is Sparse's current maintainer.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the sparse (a Semantic Parser for C)
       project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://sparse.wiki.kernel.org/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, send it to linux-sparse@vger.kernel.org.  This
       page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/devel/sparse/sparse.git⟩ on
       2024-06-14.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2024-02-03.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                                                               sparse(1)

Pages that refer to this page: cgcc(1)semind(1)