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Comments on Should I cast to (void) when I do not use the return value

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Should I cast to (void) when I do not use the return value

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I saw at least one compiler (Codewarrior for HC12) warn me if I use a function without using it's return value. Other compilers (clang/gcc) do not issue a warning though, even when using the std=90 argument.

So should I generally cast the unused return value of a function to (void)?

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Yes, it is generally good practice to always cast the return value of functions to (void) if not used. This is self-documenting code showing that you aren't using the return value on purpose and did not just forget it by accident.

For reference, either using the return value or casting it to void is enforced by MISRA-C (17.7) and other coding quality standards.

Hosted system compilers generally don't warn out of tradition, because that would mean that we'd have to write (void) printf("hello world"); and similar when using common functions, where the result is not commonly used. This whole sloppiness goes all the way back to the first K&R book. Which is a shame really, since in the case of scanf etc, it is definitely good practice to always check the result.

Codewarrior is more pedantic than hosted system compilers, because it is intended to be exclusively used for embedded systems and you aren't as likely to use stdio.h and similar libs there. Similarly, Codewarrior is intended to be suitable for automotive systems, where quality standards are much higher than those for PC programming.

This has nothing to do with C90 as such.

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General comments (2 comments)
General comments
Estela‭ wrote about 4 years ago

When you write that it is generally a good practice instead of writing always, do you mean there are specific cases where it is not a good practice?

Lundin‭ wrote about 4 years ago

@Estela It turns cumbersome to cast everything to void when using various common, poorly-designed standard library functions such as printf, strcpy etc. You do not commonly use the result of those (since it's useless most of the time).