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 haven't received our response, please do the following:
check your Spam/Junk folder and click the "Not Spam" button for our message.
This way, you won't miss messages from our team in the future.

>
>
>
V503. Nonsensical comparison: pointer &…
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#)
Problems related to code analyzer
Additional information
toggle menu Contents

V503. Nonsensical comparison: pointer < 0.

Nov 19 2010

The analyzer found a code fragment that has a nonsensical comparison. It is most probable that this code has a logic error.

Here is an example:

class MyClass {
public:
  CObj *Find(const char *name);
  ...
} Storage;

if (Storage.Find("foo") < 0)
  ObjectNotFound();

It seems almost incredible that such a code can exist in a program. However, the reason for its appearance might be quite simple. Suppose we have the following code in our program:

class MyClass {
public:
  // If the object is not found, the function
  // Find() returns -1.
  ptrdiff_t Find(const char *name);
  CObj *Get(ptrdiff_t  index);
  ...
} Storage;
...
ptrdiff_t index = Storage.Find("ZZ");
if (index >= 0)
  Foo(Storage.Get(index));
...
if (Storage.Find("foo") < 0)
  ObjectNotFound();

This is correct yet not very smart code. During the refactoring process, the MyClass class may be rewritten in the following way:

class MyClass {
public:
  CObj *Find(const char *name);
  ...
} Storage;

After this modernization of the class, you should fix all the places in the program which use the Find() function. You cannot miss the first code fragment since it will not be compiled, so it will be certainly fixed:

CObj *obj = Storage.Find("ZZ");
if (obj != nullptr)
  Foo(obj);

The second code fragment is compiled well and you might miss it easily and therefore make the error we are discussing:

if (Storage.Find("foo") < 0)
  ObjectNotFound();

This diagnostic is classified as:

You can look at examples of errors detected by the V503 diagnostic.