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How To Write Safer C/C++ Code

C and C++ are very powerful languages, but you need to be careful when using them. Here are some crucial practices:

Compiler Warnings!!!

?inline

  • -Wall
  • -Wpedantic
  • -Wextra
    for GCC and clang catch most common mistakes.

You can also use clang-tidy, IntelliSense, and other diagnostics (often integrated into IDEs).

No Unsafe Functions

?inline scanf("%s", str), gets(), and others can lead to mistakes like buffer overflows.

Accessing arrays out of bounds can be caught in C++ by using .at(x) instead of [x] for some containers.

Prefer Smart Pointers

?inline Since C++11, prefer smart pointers like std::unique_ptr and std::shared_ptr over new and delete.

Without smart pointers, it's easy to forget to delete (or to mess it up) and to leak memory.

Tracking Down Crashes, Memory Issues, Undefined Behavior

If your program is crashing, and you don't know why, you can track down the issue using additional software:

  • debuggers let you progress step by step, see the call stack, stop upon crashing, etc.
  • ASan tracks down memory issues like use-after-free:
    -fsanitize=address
  • Valgrind is a Linux program which tracks down memory issues, but attaches externally to an already compiled program

See Also