STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN

Assignment of different strong types

The STRONG.TYPE family of checkers detects situations in which programmer-enforced strong typing (type-defined abstract types) is broken or ignored, allowing the underlying ANSI type semantics to dominate.

The STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN checker looks for assignments in which strong types don't match.

Vulnerability and risk

A compiler following the ANSI standard won't report a warning for this sort of issue, as it checks only the underlying types, not the surface, or programmer-defined, types. As a result, it's possible that a logic error can occur.

Vulnerable code example

1 typedef int Weight;
2 typedef int Speed;
3 
4 int main() {
5   Weight w;
6   Speed s;
7   w = s; 
8   return 0;
9 }

Klocwork flags line 7, indicating that there is an assignment to a variable of strong type Weight from a variable of a different strong type, Speed.

Related checkers

• STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN
• STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN.ARG
• STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN.CONST
• STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN.INIT
• STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN.RETURN
• STRONG.TYPE.ASSIGN.ZERO
• STRONG.TYPE.EXTRACT