Re:Git's list of banned C functions
by moonchild on Friday March 05, 2021 @02:35AM
(#26353928)
Bounds checking can be done, and it doesn't need any special language features. Tcc does it, as do some of the sanitizers (present in gcc and clang).
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Can you bounds check dynamically sized arrays? For example, a function that receives the size as a separate argument?
double f(double *xs, int n){
return xs[g()];
}Yes. In my hypothetical world where the C compiler makes use of the VLA declaration in the function arguments, it would certainly be possible for the compiler to insert automatic bounds checking in this case:
double f(xs, n)
double xs[n];
size_t n;
{
size_t _tmp0 = g(); /* temporary var created by compiler */
assert(_tmp0 < n); /* bounds check inserted by compiler */
return xs[_tmp0];
}
The key to making this possible is telling the compiler about the relationship between double* xs and size_t n; once the compiler has the knowledge that the type of xs is double [n] (array of double with first dimension n) it would be able to automatically insert dynamic bounds checks.> dynamically sized arrays
Yes. What you can't do is associate bounds information with some specific pointer to an array, but this will work, for instance:
int *x = malloc(2 * sizeof(int));
x[1]; //ok
x[2]; //runtime error