Prof A Olowofoyeku (The African Chief) wrote:
Not necessarily. I have seen so many redundant assignments that generate hints that do not hide any bugs (such as those in my example). I am yet to see only a generated hint in a situation where there is a possible bug (in the sense of the program possibly behaving incorrectly, crashing or otherwise behaving unexpectedly).
Not using a parameter usually indicates a bug
Agreed.
So these should in general not be hints, I conclude.
-- it only makes sense in special situations (fixed parameter forms).
If callback routines are an example of this, then yes.
Yes, they are the typical example (together with other kinds of procedural parameters). Then there are (some) virtual methods, and probably some other cases. Too many to ignore this as an exotic case, but too few to accept unused parameters in general, IMHO.
Frank