V706. Suspicious division: sizeof(X) / Value. Size of every element in X array is not equal to divisor.

The analyzer has detected a suspicious division of one sizeof() operator's result by another sizeof() operator or number, sizeof() being applied to an array and the item size not coinciding with the divisor. The code is very likely to contain an error.

An example:

size_t A[10];
n = sizeof(A) / sizeof(unsigned);

In the 32-bit build mode, the sizes of the types unsigned and size_t coincide and 'n' will equal ten. In the 64-bit build mode, however, the size of the size_t type is 8 bytes while that of the unsigned type is just 4 bytes. As a result, the n variable will equal 20, which is hardly what the programmer wanted.

Code like the following one will also be considered incorrect:

size_t A[9];
n = sizeof(A) / 7;

In the 32-bit mode, the array's size is 4 * 9 = 36 bytes. Dividing 36 by 7 is very strange. So what did the programmer actually want to do? Something is obviously wrong with this code.

No concrete recommendations can be given on how to deal with issues like that because each particular case needs to be approached individually as reasons may vary: a type size might have been changed or an array size defined incorrectly, and so on. This error often results from typos or simply inattention.

The analyzer won't generate this warning if the array is of the char or uchar type since such arrays are often used as buffers to store some data of other types. The following is an example of code the analyzer treats as safe:

char A[9];
n = sizeof(A) / 3;

This diagnostic is classified as: