Hi,

Apologies if this email has been sent to the wrong location (I'm a brand new user to the Lazarus emailing list).

I recently had a software/compilation bug whereby no exception was raised when my code was accessing an array outside of its range. Took some detective work, as it was resulting in corruption at runtime with completely unrelated code. This was caused by a bug in my own software that tried to access index 72 for an array of range [0..71]. What was more interesting was that if I expanded the array to 72 (or 73,74,75 for that matter) and then tried to access range+1 (IE index 73 for the array with an index of [0..72] this appeared to cause no ill effect to my program once more, so I was extremely "lucky" to have such an obvious bug appear in my code. Something more subtle would have been a lot more difficult to locate.

The offending code is as follows:

  setlength(isMerged, ParityCol);     // fixed length for array keeping
track of merged cells.
  setlength(ColIndex, ParityCol);     // Define the length of the Column
Index
  For J := 0 to ParityCol do
    Begin
      isMerged[J] := False; //This line was leading to the program
becoming unresponsive in another totally unrelated part of code
(AssignFile...) in another procedure
      ColIndex[J] := 1000; // This line, although also accessing outside
of the legal range, did not appear to cause any problems!!!
    end;

Note I even tried the following line, which is obviously wrong (as the array has a maximum index of 71)

    ColIndex[175] := 500;

In other languages (that I am more familiar with) an exception (Error : Array index outside of range) would have been raised. Why does the Lazarus compiler not raise a similar error?

I am using:

Code Typhon Version 6.0
FPC Version 3.1.1
SVN Revision : 54036

Assuming this is an actual bug in the compiler, then I hope this information proves useful. If not, then please advise me accordingly, thanks.

Aside from this, let me say a very big thank you to you guys for all your hard work in what is a very useful piece of software for me (FPC). Your efforts are greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Graham
New Zealand

[...] I recently had a software/compilation bug whereby no exception was raised when my code was accessing an array outside of its range.

Enable runtime range checks:
Project / Project Options / Compiler Option / Debugging / Checks / Range

Or have a "debug" and "release" mode:
http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/IDE_Window:_Compiler_Options#Adding_a_release_and_debug_build_modes

Mattias

Took

The Free Pascal compiler does not do range checking by default, you need to enable it with -Cr (there is an option in the project option dialog).

araminta: ~ >fpc ta.pp -Cr
araminta: ~ >./ta
Runtime error 201 at $00010D50
$00010D50
araminta: ~ >cat ta.pp

Var
   I : Integer;
   A : Array of byte;
   B :  Array of byte;
begin
   SetLength(A,12);
   SetLength(B,12);
   for I:=0 to length(A)+1 do
     A[i]:=1;
end.

Michael.