Our website uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience.
Accept
to the top
close form

Fill out the form in 2 simple steps below:

Your contact information:

Step 1
Congratulations! This is your promo code!

Desired license type:

Step 2
Team license
Enterprise license
** By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement
close form
Request our prices
New License
License Renewal
--Select currency--
USD
EUR
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
Free PVS‑Studio license for Microsoft MVP specialists
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
To get the licence for your open-source project, please fill out this form
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
I am interested to try it on the platforms:
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
check circle
Message submitted.

Your message has been sent. We will email you at


If you do not see the email in your inbox, please check if it is filtered to one of the following folders:

  • Promotion
  • Updates
  • Spam

Webinar: Evaluation - 05.12

>
>
>
V2549. MISRA. Pointer to FILE should no…
menu mobile close menu
Analyzer diagnostics
General Analysis (C++)
General Analysis (C#)
General Analysis (Java)
Micro-Optimizations (C++)
Diagnosis of 64-bit errors (Viva64, C++)
Customer specific requests (C++)
MISRA errors
AUTOSAR errors
OWASP errors (C++)
OWASP errors (C#)
Problems related to code analyzer
Additional information
toggle menu Contents

V2549. MISRA. Pointer to FILE should not be dereferenced.

Jun 18 2019

This diagnostic rule is based on software development guidelines developed by MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association).

This rule applies only to C. A pointer to the standard type FILE must not be dereferenced, whether explicitly or implicitly. Copying this object is pointless as the copy will not show the same behavior. Direct use of a FILE object is forbidden because it may be incompatible with the accepted file stream handling design.

Explicit dereferencing is in fact ordinary dereferencing with the use of specific operators:

  • *p;
  • p->_Placeholder;
  • p[0];

Implicit dereferencing involves calling a function inside which the pointer is dereferenced, for example, 'memcpy' or 'memcmp'.

Example of non-compliant code:

void foo()
{
  FILE *f = fopen(....);
  FILE *d = fopen(....);
  ....
  if (memcmp(f, d, sizeof(FILE)) == 0) { .... } // <=
  memset(d, 0, sizeof(*d));                     // <=
  *d = *f;                                      // <=
  ....
}

This diagnostic is classified as:

  • MISRA-C-22.5