Subject: bug#61730: 30.0.50; Compiler warnings for delq and delete

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2023 16:45:18 +0100

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

> Not in my opinion.  I'm sick and tired from seeing compilers emitting
> bogus warnings which require one to spend time verifying perfectly
> correct code, or, worse, modify the code to shut up the compiler.  Do
> we really want to see stuff like
>
>   (setq _ (delq ...))
>
> in our code?

That's a bit of an exaggeration: the code would just look like in the
thousands of other cases where we are not sure whether the element to
delete is not at the head, like

  (setq my-list (delq elt my-list))

which is not worse, even better readable IMO, than a naked `delq'
call.

> If it's really impossible (and I'm not sure it is), then the better
> course of action is to emit the warnings only if the byte compiler was
> requested to be more sensitive to potential issues, similar to GCC's
> "-W*" options.  IOW, if someone wants to lint their code, let them ask
> for a linting compilation.

But I would be okay with that.

Michael.