getting an error "scanf without field width limits can crash with huge input data on some versions of libc"

Question

While doing cppcheck, cppcheck is showing 'invalid scanf' and it is saying:

scanf without field width limits can crash with huge input data on some versions of libc.

Does it give any crash for my program? How to get rid of this issue?

   int a;
   char str[32];
   int part[4];
   // after this i am storing some string in 'str'.
   a = sscanf(str, "%d%d%d%d", &part[0], &part[1], &part[2], &part[3]); // here i am getting that cppcheck portability error.

Richard Hodges Richard Hodges · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-13T13:45:03

How to get rid of this issue

By writing C++ rather than C, and using C++ Standard Library tools rather than the out-dated and often unsafe C Standard Library tools.

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>

void test()
{
   std::string str("4 5 6 7");
   int part[4];

  std::istringstream ss(str);
  ss >> part[0]
    >> part[1]
    >> part[2]
    >> part[3];

}

getting an error "scanf without field width limits can crash with huge input data on some versions of libc"

2 Answers