MSVC equivalent of __attribute__ ((warn_unused_result))?

c++ c visual-c++ gcc gcc-warning
Paul R picture Paul R · Nov 19, 2010 · Viewed 9.7k times · Source

I'm finding __attribute__ ((warn_unused_result)) to be very useful as a means of encouraging developers not to ignore error codes returned by functions, but I need this to work with MSVC as well as gcc and gcc-compatible compilers such as ICC. Do the Microsoft Visual Studio C/C++ compilers have an equivalent mechanism ? (I've tried wading through MSDN without any luck so far.)

Answer

Albert picture Albert · Mar 31, 2014

It's _Check_return_. See here for examples of similar annotations and here for function behaviour. It's supported since MSVC 2012.

Example:

_Check_return_
int my_return_must_be_checked() {
    return 42;
}

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