Lint, or a linter, is a static code analysis tool used to flag programming errors, bugs, stylistic errors and suspicious constructs. The term originates from a Unix utility that examined C language source code.
Stephen C. Johnson, a computer scientist at Bell Labs, came up with lint in 1978 while debugging the yacc grammar he was writing for C and dealing with portability issues stemming from porting Unix to a 32-bit machine.The term "lint" was derived from lint, the name for the tiny bits of fiber and fluff shed by clothing, as the command should act like the lint trap in a clothes dryer, detecting small errors to great effect. In 1979, lint was used outside of Bell Labs for the first time, in the seventh version (V7) of Unix.
Over the years, different versions of lint have been developed for many C and C++ compilers, and while modern-day compilers have lint-like functions, lint-like tools have also advanced their capabilities. For example, Gimpel's PC-Lint, introduced in 1985 and used to analyze C++ source code, is still for sale.
