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V526. The 'strcmp' function returns 0 i…
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V526. The 'strcmp' function returns 0 if corresponding strings are equal. Consider inspecting the condition for mistakes.

Dec 13 2010

This message is a kind of recommendation. It rarely diagnoses a logical error but helps make code more readable for young developers.

The analyzer detected a construct comparing two strings that can be written in a clearer way. Such functions as strcmp, strncmp and wcsncmp return 0 if strings identical. It may cause logical errors in program. Look at a code sample:

if (strcmp(s1, s2))

This condition will hold if the strings ARE NOT IDENTICAL. Perhaps you remember well what strcmp() returns, but a person who rarely works with string functions might think that the strcmp() function returns the value of type 'bool'. Then he will read this code in this way: "the condition is true if the strings match".

You'd better not save on more characters in the program text and write the code this way:

if (strcmp(s1, s2) != 0)

This text tells the programmer that the strcmp() function returns some numeric value, not the bool type. This code ensures that the programmer will understand it properly.

If you do not want to get this diagnostic message, you may disable it in the analyzer settings.

This diagnostic is classified as:

You can look at examples of errors detected by the V526 diagnostic.

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