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Noncompliant Code Example

In this noncompliant example, the user-defined function get_size() (not shown) is used to calculate the size requirements for a dynamic array of long int that is assigned to the variable num_elements. When calloc() is called to allocate the buffer, num_elements is multiplied by sizeof(long) to compute the overall size requirements. If the number of elements multiplied by the size cannot be represented as a size_t, then calloc() may allocate a buffer of insufficient size. When data is copied to that buffer, a buffer an overflow may occur.

size_t num_elements;

/* initialize num_elements to the number of elements needed */

long *buffer = (long *)calloc(num_elements, sizeof(long));
if (buffer == NULL) {
  /* Handle error condition */
}
/*...*/
free(buffer);
buffer = NULL; 

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long *buffer;
size_t num_elements;

/* initialize num_elements to the number of elements needed */

if (num_elements > SIZE_MAX/sizeof(long)) {
  /* Handle error condition */
}
buffer = (long *)calloc(num_elements, sizeof(long));
if (buffer == NULL) {
  /* Handle error condition */
}

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