[solved] unused type declarations

[speter]

Is it possible to get a report (or compiler hints) on unused type declarations - like the compiler will mention local variables that are unused?

cheers
S.

[Thaddy]

No. It is also not necessary, because types that are not used are also not used by the compiler.
I assume you are under the impression that it leads to smaller code: it does not, it is simply omitted.
Someone else may use a type that you do not use, so never remove type declarations unless you are sure ithey no longer serve a purpose.

[speter]

Thanks for the reply Thaddy.

I am currently working on some very old code and (simply) wanted to "clean it up" a bit by removing ancient unused stuff.

cheers
S.

[440bx]

I am currently working on some very old code and (simply) wanted to "clean it up" a bit by removing ancient unused stuff.

For clean up purposes maybe just commenting out the data type(s) (preferably one by one) you suspect are not used and recompiling will cause the compiler to tell you if the type is used or not.

Given that FPC is a fairly quick compiler, using this "brute-force" approach, it should be possible to verify/check quite a few types for use/no-use in a relatively short period of time (maybe a few days at most for a mid-size project that uses a lot of types.)

HTH.

[JuhaManninen]

For clean up purposes maybe just commenting out the data type(s) (preferably one by one) you suspect are not used and recompiling will cause the compiler to tell you if the type is used or not.

Given that FPC is a fairly quick compiler, using this "brute-force" approach, it should be possible to verify/check quite a few types for use/no-use in a relatively short period of time (maybe a few days at most for a mid-size project that uses a lot of types.)

+1
"Find in Files" (Ctrl-Shift-F) in your project source directories is even faster. If a type is only defined but not found anywhere else, it can safely be removed (or commented out).

[marcov]

Find in files does not handle ifdef. compiling is more reliable.

[speter]

Thanks everyone. I ended up writing a little program (attached) to do it. It isn't that great (it finds lots of extra crap) but it did the job for me.

cheers
S.

[PascalDragon]

Is it possible to get a report (or compiler hints) on unused type declarations - like the compiler will mention local variables that are unused?

If hints are enabled (-vh), then the compiler will issue a hint for unused types, but only if they are declared in the implementation section of a unit or in the program/library file. This is because units might be used by different programs that might use different subsets of types, thus the compiler won't issue messages for these as that might lead to you removing types (or variables, etc.) that are used by other programs.