BADFUNC.BSEARCH : Use of bsearch

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CodeSonar^® 9.2p0

CONFIDENTIAL

CodeSecure Inc

C and C++

Binaries

BADFUNC.BSEARCH : Use of bsearch

Summary

A use of bsearch(), which has undefined behavior in some circumstances.

Properties

Class Name

Use of bsearch

Significance

style

Mnemonic

BADFUNC.BSEARCH

Categories

MisraC2025	MisraC2025:21.9	The Standard Library functions bsearch and qsort of <stdlib.h> shall not be used
MisraC2023	MisraC2023:21.9	The library functions bsearch and qsort of <stdlib.h> shall not be used
Misra2012	Misra2012:21.9	The library functions bsearch and qsort of <stdlib.h> shall not be used
CWE	CWE:676	Use of Potentially Dangerous Function
	CWE:758	Reliance on Undefined, Unspecified, or Implementation-Defined Behavior
OWASP-2021	OWASP-2021:A4	Insecure design
OWASP-2025	OWASP-2025:A06	Insecure Design

Availability

Available for C and C++.

Enabling

Checks for this warning class are disabled by default. To enable them, add the following WARNING_FILTER rule to the project configuration file.

WARNING_FILTER += allow class="Use of bsearch"

Example

int mycompfn (const void* a, const void *b);
int myarr[100];

int do_lookup(int i){
    void * res;
    res = bsearch ((void *)&i, &myarr, 100, sizeof(int), &mycompfn); /* 'Use of bsearch' warning issued here */
  if (!res){
    return -1;
  }
  return *(int*)res;
}

Relevant Configuration File Parameters

This class is implemented using a BAD_FUNCTION_* rule set in the general template configuration file.

To include an additional function or set of functions in the checks for this class, create a new set of BAD_FUNCTION_* rules in which the BAD_FUNCTION_REGEX setting matches the function or set of functions you want to check and the remaining rules match those in the other sets for this class.
To remove a function or set of functions from the checks for this class, edit the configuration file to comment out the corresponding set of BAD_FUNCTION_* rules.

The following configuration file parameters affect checks for this warning class.

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