The C++ Core Guidelines are a set of tried-and-true guidelines, rules, and best practices about coding in C++
This report summarizes scanner evidence for isocpp/CppCoreGuidelines, a CSS project with 45,397 GitHub stars. SynthScan examined 31,861 lines of code across 23 source files, recording 79 pattern matches distributed across 6 syntactic categories. The legacy adjusted pattern signal is 1.8 (Low pattern signal); it is not an authorship estimate.
Use the findings to ask whether maintainers can explain intent, verify dependencies, simplify unnecessary scaffolding, and focus review effort. Risk Payload v1 adds ownership, supply-chain, over-engineering, and review-effort vectors when available. These are prompts for human verification, not probabilities, security findings, or measured maintenance costs.
Use each vector to guide manual verification of the underlying findings.
Payload schema: 1.0.0 · Engine: 2.0.0 · Scoring: heuristic-density-v1 · Scan date: 2026-10-31.
Can maintainers explain intent, assumptions, and trade-offs? 75 finding(s).
Are imports declared and package/API names verified? 4 finding(s).
Are wrappers, guards, and repeated structures necessary? 0 finding(s).
Which changes need focused human review? 79 finding(s).
This chart tracks the legacy adjusted pattern score across scan runs. Changes can reflect source changes, scan coverage, or detector/scoring versions; they do not measure AI adoption or prove that a team refactored code. Compare runs only when their scoring versions are compatible. The dashed line tracks the raw pattern-hit count.
Groups findings by configured severity weight. Severity is not a confidence estimate, security rating, or proof that a package is missing. Verify imports against the project's manifests and inspect each finding in its local design context.
This horizontal bar chart shows where configured pattern scores accumulate across directories. Treat the bars as locations to inspect, not as evidence of authorship or code quality. Use the file-level findings to decide whether a directory needs a focused ownership, dependency, complexity, or review check.
The scanner identified 79 distinct pattern matches across 6 syntactic categories. Each entry below represents a discrete location in the source code where the engine recorded a detector match to inspect in context. Expand any category row to inspect the individual file paths, line numbers, code snippets, and the lexical context (CODE, COMMENT, or STRING) in which each match was detected.
Reading the findings table: The Severity column indicates the configured finding weight (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW). The Context column identifies whether the match occurred inside executable code, an inline comment, or a string literal — legacy comment-context matches receive a ×1.5 score weight. The ⚡ bolt icon marks clustered matches: three or more patterns within a 10-line window, each receiving an additional ×1.5 density multiplier under the legacy scoring model.
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | CppCoreGuidelines.md | 9161 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | CppCoreGuidelines.md | 19721 | * use case-sensitivity for the header identifier, matching how the header is defined by the standard, specification, imp | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/md-split.py | 141 | result.reverse() | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1 | #!/usr/bin/env python | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2461 | # triggered by namespace size only, which works most of the time. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2521 | # - _ClassInfo: a class or struct. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2961 | # TODO(unknown): Could it be expanded safely to arbitrary references, | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3341 | # namespace body. In other words, don't issue blank line warnings | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3381 | # simple heuristic here: If the line is indented 4 spaces; and we have a | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3481 | # You should always have whitespace around binary operators. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3521 | # not otherwise (particularly, not when used as streams) | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3601 | """ | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3701 | error: The function to call with any errors found. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3721 | # LOG(INFO) << type{} << " ..."; | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3801 | Currently the only thing checked here is blank line before protected/private. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4001 | linenum: The number of the line to check. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4021 | # if (...) else {}; | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4041 | # {}; | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4061 | # warn, specifically: | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4361 | if rhs.find('&&') > -1 or rhs.find('||') > -1: | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4461 | # Don't want to use "raw" either, because we don't want to check inside C++11 | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4721 | 'Do not include .' + extension + ' files from other packages') | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4801 | position += 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4901 | # int operator&(const X& x) { return 42; } // unary operator& | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5021 | r'((?:|static +)(?:|const +))(?::*std::)?string( +const)? +' | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5141 | if remove_function_body: | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5201 | # of these forms: | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5241 | # Check for non-const references in function parameters. A single '&' may | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5321 | # Parameterless conversion functions, such as bool(), are allowed as they are | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5381 | CheckCStyleCast(filename, clean_lines, linenum, 'reinterpret_cast', | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5721 | # For Emacs's flymake. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 6261 | if filename != '-' and file_extension not in GetAllExtensions(): | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | scripts/python/md-split.py | 17 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 683 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1355 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1383 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1458 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1689 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1811 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2089 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2888 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3157 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3228 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3312 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3440 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3798 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3876 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4143 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4270 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4420 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4753 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5169 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5308 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5657 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 6106 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 6313 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 6414 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 910 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1077 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1264 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1622 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2633 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2690 | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | scripts/python/cpplint_wrap.py | 1 | ## wraps local cpplint to produce verbose output without code harness | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2680 | # Here we can just use a shallow copy since we are the last | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | scripts/python/md-split.py | 6 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/md-split.py | 6 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/md-split.py | 6 | CODE | |
| LOW | scripts/python/md-split.py | 9 | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 1107 | # Create a testcase for each file | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5696 | # The following function is just a speed up, no semantics are changed. | STRING |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 2614 | # Check if token is an unmatched '<'. | COMMENT |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 3240 | # Check if the // may be in quotes. If so, ignore it | STRING |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4226 | # Check if the body is empty | STRING |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4507 | # Check if the line is a header guard. | STRING |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4886 | # Check if people are using the verboten C basic types. The only exception | STRING |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 4898 | # Check if some verboten operator overloading is going on | STRING |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5079 | # Check if some verboten C functions are being used. | STRING |
| LOW | scripts/python/cpplint.py | 5839 | # Set end_col to check whole lines after we are done with the | STRING |