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V776. Potentially infinite loop. The variable in the loop exit condition does not change its value between iterations.
The analyzer detected a potentially infinite loop with its exit condition depending on a variable whose value never changes between iterations.
Consider the following example:
int Do(int x);
int n = Foo();
int x = 0;
while (x < n)
{
Do(x);
}The loop's exit condition depends on variable 'x' whose value will always be zero, so the 'x < 10' check will always evaluate to "true", causing an infinite loop. A correct version of this code could look like this:
int Do(int x);
int n = Foo();
int x = 0;
while (x < n)
{
x = Do(x);
}Here is another example where the loop exit condition depends on a variable whose value, in its turn, changes depending on other variables that never change inside the loop. Suppose we have the following method:
int Foo(int a)
{
int j = 0;
while (true)
{
if (a >= 32)
{
return j * a;
}
if (j == 10)
{
j = 0;
}
j++;
}
}The loop's exit condition depends on the 'a' parameter. If 'a' does not pass the 'a >= 32' check, the loop will become infinite, as the value of 'a' does not change between iterations. This is one of the ways to fix this code:
int Foo(int a)
{
int j = 0;
while (true)
{
if (a >= 32)
{
return j * a;
}
if (j == 10)
{
j = 0;
a++; // <=
}
j++;
}
}In the fixed version, the local variable 'j' controls how the 'a' parameter's value changes.
This diagnostic is classified as:
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