bugprone-unused-return-value

Warns on unused function return values. The checked functions can be configured.

Operator overloading with assignment semantics are ignored.

Options

CheckedFunctions

Semicolon-separated list of functions to check. This parameter supports regexp. The function is checked if the name and scope matches, with any arguments. By default the following functions are checked: ^::std::async$, ^::std::launder$, ^::std::remove$, ^::std::remove_if$, ^::std::unique$, ^::std::unique_ptr::release$, ^::std::basic_string::empty$, ^::std::vector::empty$, ^::std::back_inserter$, ^::std::distance$, ^::std::find$, ^::std::find_if$, ^::std::inserter$, ^::std::lower_bound$, ^::std::make_pair$, ^::std::map::count$, ^::std::map::find$, ^::std::map::lower_bound$, ^::std::multimap::equal_range$, ^::std::multimap::upper_bound$, ^::std::set::count$, ^::std::set::find$, ^::std::setfill$, ^::std::setprecision$, ^::std::setw$, ^::std::upper_bound$, ^::std::vector::at$, ^::bsearch$, ^::ferror$, ^::feof$, ^::isalnum$, ^::isalpha$, ^::isblank$, ^::iscntrl$, ^::isdigit$, ^::isgraph$, ^::islower$, ^::isprint$, ^::ispunct$, ^::isspace$, ^::isupper$, ^::iswalnum$, ^::iswprint$, ^::iswspace$, ^::isxdigit$, ^::memchr$, ^::memcmp$, ^::strcmp$, ^::strcoll$, ^::strncmp$, ^::strpbrk$, ^::strrchr$, ^::strspn$, ^::strstr$, ^::wcscmp$, ^::access$, ^::bind$, ^::connect$, ^::difftime$, ^::dlsym$, ^::fnmatch$, ^::getaddrinfo$, ^::getopt$, ^::htonl$, ^::htons$, ^::iconv_open$, ^::inet_addr$, isascii$, isatty$, ^::mmap$, ^::newlocale$, ^::openat$, ^::pathconf$, ^::pthread_equal$, ^::pthread_getspecific$, ^::pthread_mutex_trylock$, ^::readdir$, ^::readlink$, ^::recvmsg$, ^::regexec$, ^::scandir$, ^::semget$, ^::setjmp$, ^::shm_open$, ^::shmget$, ^::sigismember$, ^::strcasecmp$, ^::strsignal$, ^::ttyname$

  • std::async(). Not using the return value makes the call synchronous.

  • std::launder(). Not using the return value usually means that the function interface was misunderstood by the programmer. Only the returned pointer is “laundered”, not the argument.

  • std::remove(), std::remove_if() and std::unique(). The returned iterator indicates the boundary between elements to keep and elements to be removed. Not using the return value means that the information about which elements to remove is lost.

  • std::unique_ptr::release(). Not using the return value can lead to resource leaks if the same pointer isn’t stored anywhere else. Often, ignoring the release() return value indicates that the programmer confused the function with reset().

  • std::basic_string::empty() and std::vector::empty(). Not using the return value often indicates that the programmer confused the function with clear().

CheckedReturnTypes

Semicolon-separated list of function return types to check. By default the following function return types are checked: ^::std::error_code$, ^::std::error_condition$, ^::std::errc$, ^::std::expected$, ^::boost::system::error_code$

AllowCastToVoid

Controls whether casting return values to void is permitted. Default: false.

cert-err33-c is an alias of this check that checks a fixed and large set of standard library functions.