I have a simple brainfuck interpreter in C that throws the following warning in scan-build:
$ scan-build gcc -Wall -g -std=c99 main.c
scan-build: Using '/usr/bin/clang' for static analysis
main.c:14:11: warning: Assigned value is garbage or undefined
c = *(program + instruction_index);
^ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 warning generated.
scan-build: 1 bug found.
Here is the smallest version of my program that exhibits this behavior:
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <alloca.h>
void eval_program(char *program) {
int program_len = strlen(program);
int data_index = 0, instruction_index = 0;
char c;
while (instruction_index < program_len) {
c = *(program + instruction_index);
switch (c) {
case '>':
data_index++;
instruction_index++;
break;
default:
instruction_index++;
break;
}
}
}
char *read_string(int file_descriptor) {
char *s = NULL;
int total_bytes_read = 0;
int BUFFER_SIZE = sizeof(char) * 1024;
char *temp_buffer = alloca(BUFFER_SIZE);
int bytes_read;
while ((bytes_read = read(file_descriptor, temp_buffer, BUFFER_SIZE))) {
s = realloc(s, total_bytes_read + bytes_read);
memcpy(s + total_bytes_read, temp_buffer, bytes_read);
total_bytes_read += bytes_read;
}
s = realloc(s, total_bytes_read + 1);
s[total_bytes_read] = '\0';
return s;
}
int main() {
char *program = read_string(0);
eval_program(program);
free(program);
return 0;
}
This program does not generate any warnings when compiling with GCC and -Wall -Wextraso why access file junk or undefined? The program works great when testing.
This is a minimal example without error checking mallocor read, but a warning still occurs if I use error checking . A warning also occurs if replaced reallocby malloc.