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

Copy
 typedef int Weight;
 typedef int Speed;
 
 int main() {
   Weight w;
   Speed s;
   w = s; 
   return 0;
 }

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.