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V551. Unreachable code under a 'case' l…
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V551. Unreachable code under a 'case' label.

Jun 30 2011

The analyzer detected a potential error: one of the switch() operator's branches never gets control. The reason is that the switch() operator's argument cannot accept the value defined in the case operator.

Consider this sample:

char ch = strText[i];
switch (ch)
{
case '<':
  strHTML += "<";
  bLastCharSpace = FALSE;
  nNonbreakChars++;
  break;
case '>':
  strHTML += ">";
  bLastCharSpace = FALSE;
  nNonbreakChars++;
  break;
case 0xB7:
case 0xBB:
  strHTML += ch;
  strHTML += "<wbr>";
  bLastCharSpace = FALSE;
  nNonbreakChars = 0;
  break;
...
}

The branch following "case 0xB7:" and "case 0xBB:" in this code will never get control. The 'ch' variable has the 'char' type and therefore the range of its values is [-128..127]. The comparisons "ch == 0xB7" and "ch==0xBB" will always be false. To make the code correct, we must cast the 'ch' variable to the 'unsigned char' type:

unsigned char ch = strText[i];
switch (ch)
{
...
case 0xB7:
case 0xBB:
  strHTML += ch;
  strHTML += "<wbr>";
  bLastCharSpace = FALSE;
  nNonbreakChars = 0;
  break;
...
}

This diagnostic is classified as:

You can look at examples of errors detected by the V551 diagnostic.