 
                            According to MISRA 2008, concatenation of wide and narrow string literals leads to undefined behavior. This was once considered implicitly undefined behavior until C90 [ISO/IEC 9899:1990]. However, C99 defined this behavior [ISO/IEC 9899:1999], and C11 further explains in section subclause 6.4.5, paragraph 5 [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]:
In translation phase 6, the multibyte character sequences specified by any sequence of adjacent character and identically-prefixed string literal tokens are concatenated into a single multibyte character sequence. If any of the tokens has an encoding prefix, the resulting multibyte character sequence is treated as having the same prefix; otherwise, it is treated as a character string literal. Whether differently-prefixed wide string literal tokens can be concatenated and, if so, the treatment of the resulting multibyte character sequence are implementation-defined.
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If the concatenated string needs to be a wide string literal, each element in the concatenation must be a wide string literal, as in this compliant solution.:
| Code Block | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 
 | ||||
| wchar_t *msg = L"This message is very long, so I want to divide it "
               L"into two parts.";
 | 
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If wide string literals are unnecessary, it is better to use narrow string literals, as in this compliant solution.:
| Code Block | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 
 | ||||
| char *msg = "This message is very long, so I want to divide it "
            "into two parts.";
 | 
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The concatenation of wide and narrow string literals could lead to undefined behavior.
| Rule | Severity | Likelihood | Detectable | 
|---|
| Repairable | Priority | Level | 
|---|---|---|
| STR10-C | 
| Low | Probable | 
| Yes | 
| No | P4 | L3 | 
Automated Detection
| Tool | Version | Checker | Description | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astrée | 
 | encoding-mismatch | Fully checked | ||||||
| Axivion Bauhaus Suite | 
 | CertC-STR10 | |||||||
| ECLAIR | 
 | 
| CC2.STR10 | Fully implemented. | ||||||||
| Helix QAC | 
 | C0874 | |||||||
| LDRA tool suite | 
 | 450 S | Fully implemented | ||||||
| Parasoft C/C++test | 
 | CERT_C-STR10-a | Narrow and wide string literals shall not be concatenated | ||||||
| PC-lint Plus | 
 | 707 | Fully supported | ||||||
| SonarQube C/C++ Plugin | 
 | NarrowAndWideStringConcat | |||||||
| RuleChecker | 
 | encoding-mismatch | Fully checked | 
Related Vulnerabilities
Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.
Related Guidelines
Bibliography
| [ISO/IEC 9899:2011] | Section 6.4.5, "String Literals" | 
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