Rule 01. Preprocessor (PRE)

Created by Admin, last updated by David Svoboda on Aug 06, 2025 1 minute read

Information for Editors
To have a new guideline automatically listed above be sure to label it pre and rule.

Risk Assessment Summary

Rule	Severity	Likelihood	Detectable	Repairable	Priority	Level
PRE30-C	Low	Unlikely	Yes	No	P2	L3
PRE31-C	Low	Unlikely	No	Yes	P2	L3
PRE32-C	Low	Unlikely	Yes	Yes	P3	L3

Related Rules and Recommendations

DCL00-C. Const-qualify immutable objects

2 Comments

David Svoboda
Dec 09, 2010
PCLint has error 553 (see http://gimpel-online.com/MsgRef.html), which identifies undefined preprocessor macros that are used in a macro context, such as #if. Do we need a secure coding rule about this?
1. Martin Sebor
  Dec 11, 2010
  It's not uncommon to reference an undefined macro in the #if directive:
  
  #if HAVE_SOME_FEATURE /* use SOME feature */ #else /* work around the absence of SOME feature */ #endif
  
  When HAVE_SOME_FEATURE is not defined by the configuration script it's treated as if its value was 0. That said, some compilers (EDG eccp being one) have an option to make it possible to diagnose these usually benign cases.