User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:5.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/5.0 Build ID: 20110622232440 Steps to reproduce: cppcheck 1.49 (http://cppcheck.sourceforge.net/) found a plenty of potential null pointer dereference. This is one of them. Actual results: There is an interesting function in the file called 'prmsgc.c'. This is it: static void EarthShatteringKaBoom(PRInt32 whichOne) { long* p = 0; *p = 0; } Obviously, this will cause a null pointer dereference at every call. The question is that: is this function called at least once? Yes. (Another interesting solution: it is called with argument 0,1 or 3. Why?) Expected results: I think this was some kind of assertion. But I think this is a very bad pattern, and it should be replaced with some proper error handling.

Thank you for the bug report. The code in mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc is dead code. It is not being used. So it is not worthwhile to fix that code. Please configure cppcheck to exclude the entire mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc directory, or treat the EarthShatteringKaBoom() function as an abort/exit function.

Patch checked in on the NSPR trunk (NSPR 4.9). Note that I plan to remove the lib/msgc directory from the CVS repository soon. This patch gets it to build (in the objdir build configuration) before I CVS remove it. Checking in lib/msgc/include/Makefile.in; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/include/Makefile.in,v <-- Makefile.in new revision: 1.12; previous revision: 1.11 done Checking in lib/msgc/src/Makefile.in; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/Makefile.in,v <-- Makefile.in new revision: 1.16; previous revision: 1.15 done

I removed the mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc directory from CVS on the NSPR trunk (NSPR 4.9). Removing lib/msgc/.cvsignore; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/.cvsignore,v <-- .cvsignore new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.2 done Removing lib/msgc/Makefile.in; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/Makefile.in,v <-- Makefile.in new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.8 done Removing lib/msgc/include/.cvsignore; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/include/.cvsignore,v <-- .cvsignore new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.2 done Removing lib/msgc/include/Makefile.in; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/include/Makefile.in,v <-- Makefile.in new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.12 done Removing lib/msgc/include/gcint.h; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/include/gcint.h,v <-- gcint.h new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.6 done Removing lib/msgc/include/prgc.h; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/include/prgc.h,v <-- prgc.h new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.7 done Removing lib/msgc/src/.cvsignore; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/.cvsignore,v <-- .cvsignore new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.2 done Removing lib/msgc/src/Makefile.in; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/Makefile.in,v <-- Makefile.in new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.16 done Removing lib/msgc/src/os2gc.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/os2gc.c,v <-- os2gc.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.6 done Removing lib/msgc/src/prgcapi.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/prgcapi.c,v <-- prgcapi.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.8 done Removing lib/msgc/src/prmsgc.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/prmsgc.c,v <-- prmsgc.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.12 done Removing lib/msgc/src/unixgc.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/unixgc.c,v <-- unixgc.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.6 done Removing lib/msgc/src/win32gc.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/src/win32gc.c,v <-- win32gc.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.5 done Removing lib/msgc/tests/.cvsignore; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/tests/.cvsignore,v <-- .cvsignore new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.2 done Removing lib/msgc/tests/Makefile.in; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/tests/Makefile.in,v <-- Makefile.in new revision: delete; previous revision: 1.17 done Removing lib/msgc/tests/gc1.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/tests/gc1.c,v <-- gc1.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.7 done Removing lib/msgc/tests/thrashgc.c; /cvsroot/mozilla/nsprpub/lib/msgc/tests/thrashgc.c,v <-- thrashgc.c new revision: delete; previous revision: 3.6 done