Can specific Delphi hints be disabled?

Question

In Delphi, you can use compiler directives to disable specific warnings, such as

{$WARN USE_BEFORE_DEF OFF}

But when I tried to do that with a specific hint, whose underscore_style_name I got out of the helpfile, the compiler said it doesn't know what {$HINT} is. So is there any way to do this?

Answer 1

Best I can think of is to surround the subject of the hint with a conditional define, and use the same conditional define around the code that may or may not be needed, as shown below:

If you have this:

procedure MyProc;
var
  i : integer;
begin
  DoSomething;
  //SomethingWith_i_IsCommentedOut;
end;

You will get: Hint: variable "i" is declared but never used

So try this instead:

procedure MyProc;
  {$IFDEF USE_THE_I_PROCEDURE}
var
  i : integer;
  {$ENDIF}
begin
  DoSomething;
  {$IFDEF USE_THE_I_PROCEDURE}
  SomethingWith_i_IsCommentedOut;
  {$ENDIF}
end;

Now you can turn the define on or off, and you should never get a hint.

Answer 2

No specific hints, but you can disable them all.

{$HINTS OFF}
procedure MyProc;
var
  i : integer;
begin
  DoSomething;
end;
{$HINTS ON}

Answer 3

Little off-topic: You should take care about compiler's hints and warnings. They are not just for fun. Compiler is just saying "program may work differently that you think because YOUR source code is not exact".

Answer 4

To play it really safe, one would like to do something like this:

function TopazGetText(const _s: string): string;
begin
{$IFOPT <something>+}
{$DEFINE HINTS_WERE_ON}
{$HINTS OFF}
{$ELSE}
{$UNDEF HINTS_WERE_ON}
{$ENDIF}
  Result := dzDGetText(_s, TOPAZ_TRANSLATION_DOMAIN);
{$IFDEF HINTS_WERE_ON}
{$HINTS ON}
{$ENDIF}
end;

Unfortunately there seems to be no compiler directive for checking whether hints are off or not, so you can't do this. (H+ is not for hints but for long strings). Also, HINTS OFF / ON does not work within a function/procedure.

So you end up turning hints off and on unconditionally for the whole function:

{$HINTS OFF}
function TopazGetText(const _s: string): string;
begin
  Result := dzDGetText(_s, TOPAZ_TRANSLATION_DOMAIN);
end;
{$HINTS ON}

(The compiler used to tell me that it could not inline dzDGetText which is something I don't care about in this case and I don't want to see the hint because this would stop me (and my coworkers) to care about important hints.)