A switch statement consists of several case labels, plus a default label. The default label is optional but recommended. (See MSC01-C. Strive for logical completeness.) A series of statements following a case label conventionally ends with a break statement; if omitted, control flow falls through to the next case in the switch statement block. Because the break statement is not required, omitting it does not produce compiler diagnostics. If the omission was unintentional, it can result in an unexpected control flow.

Noncompliant Code Example

In this noncompliant code example, the case where widget_type is WE_W lacks a break statement. Consequently, statements that should be executed only when widget_type is WE_X are executed even when widget_type is WE_W.

enum WidgetEnum { WE_W, WE_X, WE_Y, WE_Z } widget_type;
widget_type = WE_X;

switch (widget_type) {
  case WE_W:
    /* ... */
  case WE_X:
    /* ... */
    break;
  case WE_Y: 
  case WE_Z:
    /* ... */
    break;
  default: /* Can't happen */
	 /* Handle error condition */
}

Compliant Solution

In this compliant solution, each sequence of statements following a case label ends with a break statement:

enum WidgetEnum { WE_W, WE_X, WE_Y, WE_Z } widget_type;
widget_type = WE_X;

switch (widget_type) {
  case WE_W:
    /* ... */
    break;
  case WE_X:
    /* ... */
    break;
  case WE_Y: 
  case WE_Z:
    /* ... */
    break;
  default: /* Can't happen */
	 /* Handle error condition */
}

A break statement is not required following the case where widget_type is WE_Y because there are no statements before the next case label, indicating that both WE_Y and WE_Z should be handled in the same fashion.

A break statement is not required following the default case because it would not affect the control flow.

Exceptions

MSC17-C-EX1: The last label in a switch statement requires no final break. It will conventionally be the default label.

MSC17-C-EX2: When control flow is intended to cross statement labels, it is permissible to omit the break statement. In these instances, the unusual control flow must be made clear, such as by adding the [[fallthrough]] C2x attribute, the __attribute__((__fallthrough__)) GNU extension, or a simple comment.

enum WidgetEnum { WE_W, WE_X, WE_Y, WE_Z } widget_type;
widget_type = WE_X;

switch (widget_type) {
  case WE_W:
    /* ... */
    /* No break; fall through to the WE_X case */
  case WE_X:
    /* ... */
    break;
  case WE_Y: case WE_Z:
    /* ... */
    break;
  default: /* Can't happen */
	 /* Handle error condition */
}

Risk Assessment

Failure to include break statements leads to unexpected control flow.

Recommendation

Severity

Likelihood

Remediation Cost

Priority

Level

MSC17-C

Medium

Likely

Low

P18

L1

Automated Detection

Tool

Version

Checker

Description

Astrée
24.04
switch-clause-break
switch-clause-break-continue
switch-clause-break-return
Fully checked
CodeSonar
8.1p0
LANG.STRUCT.SW.MBMissing break
Compass/ROSE




Coverity

2017.07

MISSING_BREAK

Can find instances of missing break statement between cases in switch statement

ECLAIR

1.2

CC2.MSC17

Fully implemented

Helix QAC

2024.2

C2003
Klocwork
2024.2
MISRA.SWITCH.WELL_FORMED.BREAK.2012
LDRA tool suite
9.7.1
62 SFully implemented
Parasoft C/C++test
2023.1
CERT_C-MSC17-aMissing break statement between cases in a switch statement
PC-lint Plus

1.4

616, 825

Fully supported

Polyspace Bug Finder

R2024a

CERT C: Rec. MSC17-CChecks for missing break of switch case (rec. fully covered)
PVS-Studio

7.33

V796
RuleChecker
24.04
switch-clause-break
switch-clause-break-continue
switch-clause-break-return
Fully checked
SonarQube C/C++ Plugin
3.11
NonEmptyCaseWithoutBreak

Related Vulnerabilities

Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.

Related Guidelines



8 Comments

  1. I disagree with MSC17-EX1 for two reasons: 1) I don't think we should speak to conventions in this case. I've seen coding standards that require the default statement to be the first statement in the switch, for instance.  We don't know what "most programmers" do, basically.  2) Leaving off the break on the last case (be it case or default) makes the code more error prone when refactoring because adding a subsequent case would then possibly run afoul of the same recommendation.

  2. Instead of just saying "In these instances, the unusual control flow must be explicitly documented" and using arbitrary freeform comments, we should say to use the comment /* FALLTHROUGH */ for intentional fallthroughs so that GCC's -Wimplicit-fallthrough warning can be used to catch accidental fallthroughs.

    1. Please keep in mind that fallthrough comments are not portable (GCC supports them, Clang has recently refused to), are somewhat arbitrary (some different capitalizations and whitespaces are supported), and are lost when you do operations like preprocess to a file and then compile that output. Also, there are other approaches to consider recommending, like [[fallthrough]] in C2x or __attribute__((fallthrough)), etc.

      1. [[fallthrough]] would definitely be my preferred choice once C2x becomes official. For current code that's meant to be portable to Windows, I prefer a comment over __attribute__ since MSVC will choke on the latter unless you #define it away (in violation of DCL37-C. Do not declare or define a reserved identifier), but compilers that don't recognize the fallthrough comment will still be fine, since it's still just a comment.

        I think it would make sense to mention all of the approaches, though, and briefly mention the pros and cons of each.

        1. I agree that listing several options and discussing the pros and cons of each would be reasonable.

          1. I would also encourage a discussion about nonportable alternatives. I'll add that MSC17-C-EX2 is the reason that this is a recommendation, not a rule. We don't expect analysis tools to parse comments and so we believe that they cannot currently distinguish intentional vs unintentional fallthrough.

            If the [[fallthrough]] attribute gets accepted into C1x, then we can not only promote it, but we could promote this recommendation to a rule, and add "if you use an old compiler then you can't comply with this rule, good luck".

            BTW MSVC has supported the [[fallthrough]] attribute since v15.3
            https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/cpp/attributes?view=vs-2019

            1. I also wanted to thank Aaron Ballmanfor promoting attributes (including [[fallthrough]]) in C. As he knows, I tried promoting them in 2010 and failed, but Aaron's effort is more likely to succeed:
              http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n2269.pdf

              1. FWIW, the attribute syntax and the [[fallthrough]] attribute were both adopted for C2x (and is available in both Clang and GCC). While it's possible they get pulled out of the standard before we publish, I'd be surprised as they were adopted with strong consensus and we'd need stronger consensus to remove.