From LQWiki
lint was originally a source code analysis program designed to find odd behavior in C source code files around the early years of C. lint itself has been replaced by other projects that perform the same job, and the term has become generic for any tool that searches the source codes for potential bugs, possible vulnerabilities, unused sections of code, unusual behavior (such as possible typos), and other 'lint' in the files. These lint-like tools can analyze the source code potentially better then a compiler can, because they can flag valid code as containing potential errors, something a compiler would probably ignore.
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