GCC supports `-Wparentheses' (warn about some constructs where parentheses are suggested for clarification, although not strictly syntactically necessary). The corresponding code is also there for GPC. I'm going to activate it now. The questions are:
- Which constructs to warn about? So far, I've come up with the following ones:
* `and' in an operand of `or', as in `a or b and c' which is equivalent to `a or (b and c)', but may confuse the reader. (Same for `and_then' instead of `and' etc., of course.)
* logical operations (`and', `or', `not', etc.) in an operand of a relational operator (`=', etc., `in'). This would catch cases like the dreaded `if not a = b'.
- What should be the default? I suggest off by default and on with `-Wall' (same as in GCC).
(Of course, the issue is not as serious in Pascal than it is in C where the danger of confusion between `==' and `=' in a comparison almost requires such a warning, but I think it's also useful in Pascal.)
Frank