LANG.STRUCT.DECL.VLA : Declaration of Variable Length Array

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CodeSonar^® 9.2p0

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C and C++

LANG.STRUCT.DECL.VLA : Declaration of Variable Length Array

Summary

A variable-length array is declared.

Properties

Class Name

Declaration of Variable Length Array

Significance

style

Mnemonic

LANG.STRUCT.DECL.VLA

Categories

MisraC2025	MisraC2025:18.8	Variable-length arrays shall not be used
MisraC2023	MisraC2023:18.8	Variable-length arrays shall not be used
Misra2012	Misra2012:18.8	Variable-length array types shall not be used
AUTOSARC++14	AUTOSARC++14:A18-1-1	C-style arrays shall not be used.
CERT-C	CERT-C:MSC23-C	Beware of vendor-specific library and language differences

Availability

Available for C and C++.

Enabling

Checks for this warning class are disabled by default, and require the unnormalized C ASTs for the project. To enable them, add the following WARNING_FILTER rule and RETAIN_UNNORMALIZED_C_AST specification to the project configuration file.

RETAIN_UNNORMALIZED_C_AST = Yes
WARNING_FILTER += allow class="Declaration of Variable Length Array"

Note that retaining the unnormalized ASTs will increase the disk space used to store the project representation, and may make the analysis take longer.

Example

void lang_struct_decl_vla(int i){
    if (i > 100){return;}
    int vla_arr[i];                    /* 'Declaration of Variable Length Array' warning issued here */
    int fix_arr[5];                                       /* fixed-length array */          
    /* ... */
}

Relevant Configuration File Parameters

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

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