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

>
>
>
V2559. MISRA. Subtraction, >, >=,…
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

V2559. MISRA. Subtraction, >, >=, <, <= should be applied only to pointers that address elements of the same array.

Nov 28 2019

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

The C/C++ standard specifies (C11 § 6.5.8 paragraph 5; C++17 § 8.5.9 paragraph 3) that applying the operator '-', '>', '>=', '<', or '<=' to two pointers that do not point to the elements of the same array is undefined/unspecified behavior. Therefore, if two pointers point to different array objects, then these objects must be elements of the same array to be comparable.

Example of non-compliant code:

int arr1[10];
int arr2[10];
int *pArr1 = arr1;
if (pArr1 < arr2)
{
  ....
}

The following code is also non-compliant:

int arr1[10];
int arr2[10];
int *pArr1 = &arr1[1];
int *pArr2 = &arr2[1];
int len = pArr1 - pArr2;

To learn more about why pointer comparisons may lead to errors, see the article: "Pointers are more abstract than you might expect in C".

This diagnostic is classified as:

  • MISRA-CPP-5.0.17
  • MISRA-CPP-5.0.18