Re: Common Lua (Logic/Style etc) Errors Detectable Through Static Analysis

[Peter Odding <peter@...>]

> One of the hallmarks of JetBrains (the maker of IntelliJ) is the
> notion of an intelligent semantically aware text editor.
>
> To honor this I have been creating what are called "inspections" which
> find common flaws in code and either flag them, or flag them and offer
> to fix them.
>
> ...
>
> I am looking for more, so I thought I would ask the list for some suggestions.

I'm not sure how common this is for others, but sometimes I define an 
object method which references the implicit "self" parameter in its body 
but then I forget to either 1. include "self" in the parameter list or 
2. define the method using the object:method() notation. The end result 
is of course that "self" refers to a (probably nonexistent) global 
variable. This could/should be pretty easy to detect using static analysis?

 - Peter Odding

--

PS. Some examples for inspections.lua:

local object = {}

-- self explicitly included in parameter list: OK
function object.goodmethod1(self) print(self) end

-- self implicitly included in parameter list: OK
function object:goodmethod2() print(self) end

-- self refers to a global, probably not what was intended!
function object.badmethod() print(self) end