undetected uninitialized variable

[Dina Goldshtein]

Today I found a very severe bug in our code where an uninitialized pointer was dereferenced. cppcheck (1.69) did not report the issue. After several tries I managed to reproduce it in a smaller environment:

int do_something()
{
    int* p;

    do
    {
        if (true) 
        {
        }
        else
        {
            return 1;
        }

        *p = 7;

        p = new int(9);
    } while (*p != 8);

    return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    return 0;
}

cppcheck's only output is "Memory leak: p" whereas dereferencing the uninitialized pointer is not mentioned.
This is a minimal example, in the sense that if I remove one of the following, the error is indeed detected:

• p = new int(9);
• the if statement
• The loop (i.e. keep just the body without the loop)

[Daniel Marjamäki]

yes that should be reported. can you please report this to the issue tracker http://trac.cppcheck.net/ so we don't forget this.

[Dina Goldshtein]

I wanted to by my trac acount is not verified. I didn't get the mail verification e-mail.

[Daniel Marjamäki]

ok sorry for the trouble. Sometimes the verification email does not work. I don't know why.

Your verification code is 41mbnTVv

please try to login. you should be asked for the verification code. and then it should work..

[Dina Goldshtein]

Opened the ticket. Thanks a lot!