Tag Archives: ATBG

ATBG: method type inference with multiple interfaces

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Today on the Coverity Development Testing Blog‘s continuing series Ask The Bug Guys, I take a question from an “Eric L”, who is confused about one of the subtle rules of method type inference despite having written the rule himself. My colleague Jon takes a question from a beginner C programmer about memory allocation.

As always, if you have questions about a bug you’ve found in a C, C++, C# or Java program that you think would make a good episode of ATBG, please send your question along with a small reproducer of the problem to TheBugGuys@Coverity.com. We cannot promise to answer every question or solve every problem, but we’ll take a selection of the best questions that we can answer and address them on the dev testing blog every couple of weeks.

ATBG: non-nullable reference types

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Today on the Coverity Development Testing Blog‘s continuing series Ask The Bug Guys, a question I’ve gotten many times in person over the years but never blogged about: just how difficult would it be to retrofit non-nullability into the .NET type system? Pretty hard, it turns out.

As always, if you have questions about a bug you’ve found in a C, C++, C# or Java program that you think would make a good episode of ATBG, please send your question along with a small reproducer of the problem to TheBugGuys@Coverity.com. We cannot promise to answer every question or solve every problem, but we’ll take a selection of the best questions that we can answer and address them on the dev testing blog every couple of weeks.

ATBG: de facto and de jure reachability

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In the latest episode of the Coverity Development Testing Blog‘s continuing series “Ask the Bug Guys”, I dig into an interesting question about inconsistencies between de facto and de jure unreachability — that is, the difference between code that is actually unreachable and the smaller set of code that the C# compiler detects as unreachable. The difference can cause some interesting inconsistencies in the compiler’s behavior. And my colleague Jon ponders the wisdom of fixing fragile, hard-to-understand code even if it is at present correct.

As always, if you have questions about a bug you’ve found in a C, C++, C# or Java program that you think would make a good episode of ATBG, please send your question along with a small reproducer of the problem to TheBugGuys@Coverity.com. We cannot promise to answer every question or solve every problem, but we’ll take a selection of the best questions that we can answer and address them on the dev testing blog every couple of weeks.

ATBG: null coalescing precedence

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In the latest episode of the Coverity Development Testing Blog‘s continuing series “Ask the Bug Guys”, I dig into two questions about the null coalescing operator. This handy little operator is probably the least well understood of all the C# operators, but it is quite useful. Unfortunately, it is easy to accidentally use it incorrectly due to precedence issues.

As always, if you have questions about a bug you’ve found in a C, C++, C# or Java program that you think would make a good episode of ATBG, please send your question along with a small reproducer of the problem to TheBugGuys@Coverity.com. We cannot promise to answer every question or solve every problem, but we’ll take a selection of the best questions that we can answer and address them on the dev testing blog every couple of weeks.

ATBG: interfaces and increments

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On today’s episode of the Coverity Development Testing Blog series Ask The Bug Guys we have two posts. I take on the question does explicit interface implementation violate encapsulation? and my colleague Jon follows up on my previous posting about increment operators to discuss the precedence of the increment operator and bonus, the meaning of local static in C/C++.

As always: if you have a question about some aspect of C, C++, C# or Java programming language design, or want to share an interesting bug that bit you in one of those languages, please send it (along with a concise reproducer of the problem) to TheBugGuys@Coverity.com. We cannot promise to answer every question or solve every problem, but we’ll take a selection of the best questions that we can answer and address them here every couple of weeks.

ATBG meets math from scratch

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In a nice bit of synchronicity my article this week on Ask The Bug Guys, our continuing series on the Coverity Development Testing Blog, is about the differences between the C, C++ and C# interpretation of the ++ operator[1. And of course everything in there applies equally well to the -- operator.] So read that first, and then it will make perfect sense why the increment operator on my Natural class from last time is simply:

public static Natural operator ++(Natural x)
{
  if (ReferenceEquals(x, null))
    throw new ArgumentNullException("x");
  return Add(x, One);
}

As always, if you have a question about a bug in a C, C++, C# or Java program please email it to TheBugGuys@coverity.com along with a concise reproducer of the problem if possible. We can’t answer every question but we’ll pick a sample of the most interesting ones a post an analysis on the dev testing blog.

Next time on FAIC: multiplication.

ATBG: guess the type

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The latest episode of Coverity’s series Ask the Bug Guys is now posted on the Development Testing Blog. In this episode, a reader get me to play “guess the type”, and my colleague Tim talks a bit about the Java equivalent of the C# using statement for releasing resources. Check it out!

As always, if you have a question about an odd bit of C#, C, C++ or Java that led to a bug, send it to TheBugGuys@coverity.com; we’d love to see it. We can’t guarantee an answer to all your problems, but we will pick a selection of the best questions and post about them on the dev testing blog.

Ask the Bug Guys

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Today on the Coverity Development Testing blog we’ve announced a new recurring feature: Ask the Bug Guys. If you’ve got a question about a strange behavior that caused a bug in a C#, Java, C or C++ program, or an interesting story to share about finding and fixing bugs, consider sending it to TheBugGuys@coverity.com. I’ll be reviewing the C# bugs, and my colleagues Jon and Tim will be looking at the C, C++ and Java submissions.

We of course cannot promise to write up an analysis of all submissions, but we will choose a selection of the most interesting and informative bugs and periodically post an analysis of them on the blog. Including a small, complete example that clearly demonstrates the bug would be helpful.