Relation to the CERT C Coding Standard

The C++ Standard, [intro.scope], paragraph 2 [ ISO/IEC 14882-2014 ] states the following:

C++ is a general purpose programming language based on the C programming language as described in ISO/IEC 9899:1999 Programming languages—C (hereinafter referred to as the C standard). In addition to the facilities provided by C, C++ provides additional data types, classes, templates, exceptions, namespaces, operator overloading, function name overloading, references, free store management operators, and additional library facilities.

Because C++ is based on the C programming language, there is considerable overlap between the guidelines specified by the SEI CERT C Coding Standard and those specified by this coding standard. To reduce the amount of duplicated information, this coding standard focuses on the parts of the C++ programming language that are not wholly covered by the CERT C Coding Standard. Because of the increased focus on types in C++, some rules in C are extended by the CERT C++ Secure Coding Standard.

Rules from the CERT C Coding Standard that apply to the CERT C++ Coding Standard are described in each related chapter of the C++ standard. The POSIX (POS) and Microsoft Windows (WIN) rules from the CERT C Coding Standard have not been reviewed for applicability to code written in C++ for those platforms.

Recommendations from the CERT C Coding Standard have not been reviewed for applicability to code written in C++.

The following rules from the CERT C Coding Standard have been reviewed and do not apply to the CERT C++ Secure Coding Standard:

• ARR32-C. Ensure size arguments for variable length arrays are in a valid range
• ARR36-C. Do not subtract or compare two pointers that do not refer to the same array
• CON30-C. Clean up thread-specific storage
• CON31-C. Do not destroy a mutex while it is locked
• CON32-C. Prevent data races when accessing bit-fields from multiple threads
• CON34-C. Declare objects shared between threads with appropriate storage durations
• CON35-C. Avoid deadlock by locking in a predefined order
• CON36-C. Wrap functions that can spuriously wake up in a loop
• CON38-C. Preserve thread safety and liveness when using condition variables
• CON39-C. Do not join or detach a thread that was previously joined or detached
• DCL31-C. Declare identifiers before using them
• DCL36-C. Do not declare an identifier with conflicting linkage classifications
• DCL37-C. Do not declare or define a reserved identifier
• DCL38-C. Use the correct syntax when declaring a flexible array member
• DCL41-C. Do not declare variables inside a switch statement before the first case label
• EXP30-C. Do not depend on the order of evaluation for side effects
• EXP32-C. Do not access a volatile object through a nonvolatile reference
• EXP33-C. Do not read uninitialized memory
• EXP40-C. Do not modify constant objects
• EXP43-C. Avoid undefined behavior when using restrict-qualified pointers
• EXP44-C. Do not rely on side effects in operands to sizeof, _Alignof, or _Generic
• MEM33-C. Allocate and copy structures containing a flexible array member dynamically
• SIG30-C. Call only asynchronous-safe functions within signal handlers