Splint (Secure Programming Lint) is a static analysis tool for the C language developed by the Inexpensive Program Analysis Group at the University of Virginiaβs Department of Computer Science. Its goal is to detect security vulnerabilities and coding errors. It can be used with relatively little effort as an enhanced version of lint; if developers are willing to add annotations to their code, it can perform stronger property checks than standard lint.
Splint focuses on C programs and checks standard C code against the ISO C99 specification. It supports most, but not all, C99 extensions, and can support some gcc extensions via +gnuextensions. Web pages and papers indicate that it targets security-related issues such as buffer overflows and dynamic memory errors. It does not support C++, nor does it support variadic macros. For non-standard keywords or types used by embedded compilers, the FAQ recommends using -D for preprocessing substitutions and -I to set include paths.
Splint is licensed under the GNU GPL, meaning anyone can use it and redistribute it as long as they comply with the license. The website provides GitHub source code, historical source packages, and a Windows Installer, so it is essentially a locally runnable, self-buildable tool rather than a cloud service. In terms of ecosystem, there have historically been third-party Windows installers, Splint GUI, an OS/2 binary, Borland C++Builder build patches, and similar resources, though much of this information comes from older news items.
Pricing is straightforward: it is free and open source. Documentation is relatively extensive, including a Manual, Documentation pages, FAQ, Examples, papers, presentation materials, release notes, and bug-reporting instructions. The FAQ provides fairly detailed explanations of practical issues such as false positives, parsing system header files, Windows configuration, non-standard keywords, and realloc checks. However, the FAQ update dates and news history suggest that the project materials are dated, so users will need to verify compatibility with modern toolchains themselves.
Its strengths are that it is lightweight, free, locally runnable, clearly useful for secure C coding, and can increase analysis depth through annotations. Its drawbacks are that it can produce false positives or miss issues, it does not support C++, its C99/gcc extension support is incomplete, Windows is not actively supported, and there are clear signs that the project is no longer actively updated. It is better suited for maintaining legacy C or embedded C code, teaching and research, secure coding training, or as a supplementary checker alongside modern tools such as cppcheck, clang-tidy, and Clang Static Analyzer.
The source material does not provide information about access from mainland China, mirrors, payments, or commercial services, so its China access status is unknown. Since the tool is free and open source, payment is not a major issue. If the official website or GitHub is unstable to access, users can consider using distribution package repositories, source-code mirrors, or the alternative tools mentioned above to perform similar static analysis.
β This review is compiled from public sources and does not constitute a purchase recommendation. Verify all facts on the vendor's official site. Verify on splint.org official site.
splint.org is an United States Dev Tools provider. TG4G tracks its product information, an overall rating of 6.0/10, and a China-accessibility score of China direct-connect friendly. Click "Visit Official Site" to reach splint.org directly.