lint compensates for separate and independent compilation in C by flagging inconsistencies in definition and use across files, including any libraries you have used. In a large project environment where the same function might be used by different programmers in hundreds of separate modules of code, lint can help discover bugs that otherwise might be difficult to find. A function called with one less argument than expected, for example, looks at the stack for a value the call has never pushed, with results correct in one condition, incorrect in another, depending on whatever happens to be in memory at that stack location. By identifying dependencies like this one and dependencies on machine architecture as well, lint can improve the reliability of code run on different machines.