Bounds checking

<h2 id="range-checking">Range checking</h2>
<p>A range check is a check to make sure a number is within a certain range; for example, to ensure that a value about to be assigned to a 16-bit integer is within the capacity of a 16-bit integer (i.e. checking against <a href="/facts/Arithmetic_overflow/sVNnSolT">wrap-around</a>). This is not quite the same as <a href="/facts/Type_checking/Tz0bAMS9">type checking</a>.[<i>how?</i>] Other range checks may be more restrictive; for example, a variable to hold the number of a calendar month may be declared to accept only the range 1 to 12.
</p><p>Example in <a href="/facts/Python_(programming_language)/YbuGqofa">Python</a>:
</p>
def set_month(month: int):
    if month < 1 or month > 12:
        raise ValueError("The month must be between 1 and 12")

<h2 id="index-checking">Index checking</h2>
<p>Index checking means that, in all <a href="/facts/Expression_(programming)/eRlhoBeN">expressions</a> indexing an array, the index value is checked against the bounds of the array (which were established when the array was defined), and if the index is out-of-bounds, further execution is suspended via some sort of error. Because reading or especially writing a value outside the bounds of an array may cause the program to malfunction or crash or enable security vulnerabilities (see <a href="/facts/Buffer_overflow/uMFduL4B">buffer overflow</a>), index checking is a part of many <a href="/facts/High-level_programming_language/smjECUhx">high-level languages</a>.
</p><p>Early compiled <a href="/facts/Programming_language/cWTYbgWa">programming languages</a> with index checking ability included <a href="/facts/ALGOL_60/QnpxUYQm">ALGOL 60</a>, <a href="/facts/ALGOL_68/NTnc9fy7">ALGOL 68</a> and <a href="/facts/Pascal_(programming_language)/b3yvp8bF">Pascal</a>, as well as interpreted programming languages such as <a href="/facts/BASIC/VYMl5TmA">BASIC</a>.
</p><p>Many programming languages, such as <a href="/facts/C_(programming_language)/Ky2No763">C</a>, never perform automatic bounds checking to raise speed. However, this leaves many <a href="/facts/Off-by-one_error/2rMj4LYM">off-by-one errors</a> and <a href="/facts/Buffer_overflow/uMFduL4B">buffer overflows</a> uncaught. Many programmers believe these languages sacrifice too much for rapid execution.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:1" href="#fn:1"><sup>1</sup></a> In his 1980 <a href="/facts/Turing_Award/HbEEp0GF">Turing Award</a> lecture, <a href="/facts/C._A._R._Hoare/vBeb3cmn">C. A. R. Hoare</a> described his experience in the design of <a href="/facts/ALGOL_60/QnpxUYQm">ALGOL 60</a>, a language that included bounds checking, saying:
</p>
<blockquote><p>A consequence of this principle is that every occurrence of every subscript of every subscripted variable was on every occasion checked at run time against both the upper and the lower declared bounds of the array. Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interest of efficiency on production runs. Unanimously, they urged us not to—they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law.</p></blockquote>
<p>Mainstream languages that enforce run time checking include <a href="/facts/Ada_(programming_language)/Y2yHel4l">Ada</a>, <a href="/facts/C_Sharp_(programming_language)/UC2gxeyb">C#</a>, <a href="/facts/Haskell_(programming_language)/4Htv9WLu">Haskell</a>, <a href="/facts/Java_(programming_language)/9ScgFyAL">Java</a>, <a href="/facts/JavaScript/XhhIIEsl">JavaScript</a>, <a href="/facts/Lisp_(programming_language)/xJHA3CrX">Lisp</a>, <a href="/facts/PHP/vU6YRJX0">PHP</a>, <a href="/facts/Python_(programming_language)/YbuGqofa">Python</a>, <a href="/facts/Ruby_(programming_language)/BeYSaPSR">Ruby</a>, <a href="/facts/Rust_(programming_language)/8JNMV19F">Rust</a>, and <a href="/facts/Visual_Basic/7QMXM6fP">Visual Basic</a>. The <a href="/facts/D_(programming_language)/4qIzRjkF">D</a> and <a href="/facts/OCaml/ThBGLND8">OCaml</a> languages have run time bounds checking that is enabled or disabled with a compiler switch. In <a href="/facts/C%2B%2B/Et0F2qn9">C++</a> run time checking is not part of the language, but part of the <a href="/facts/Standard_Template_Library/IxqpRzWU">STL</a> and is enabled with a compiler switch (_GLIBCXX_DEBUG=1 or _LIBCPP_DEBUG=1). C# also supports <i>unsafe regions</i>: sections of code that (among other things) temporarily suspend bounds checking to raise efficiency. These are useful for speeding up small time-critical bottlenecks without sacrificing the safety of a whole program.
</p><p>The <a href="/facts/JS%2B%2B/cNwbuhM6">JS++</a> programming language is able to analyze if an array index or map key is out-of-bounds at compile time using existent types, which is a <a href="/facts/Nominal_type_system/v3AUT1Km">nominal type</a> describing whether the index or key is within-bounds or out-of-bounds and guides code generation. Existent types have been shown to add only 1ms overhead[<i>clarify</i>] to compile times.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a>
</p>
<h2 id="hardware-bounds-checking">Hardware bounds checking</h2>
<p>The safety added by bounds checking necessarily costs CPU time if the checking is performed in software; however, if the checks could be performed by hardware, then the safety can be provided "for free" with no runtime cost. An early system with hardware bounds checking was the <a href="/facts/ICL_2900_Series/ka6K2NFC">ICL 2900 Series</a> mainframe announced in 1974.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> The <a href="/facts/VAX/N3r13IHH">VAX</a> computer has an INDEX assembly instruction for array index checking which takes six operands, all of which can use any VAX addressing mode. The B6500 and similar <a href="/facts/Burroughs_Corporation/NAEwIvpU">Burroughs</a> computers performed bound checking via hardware, irrespective of which computer language had been compiled to produce the machine code.  A limited number of later <a href="/facts/CPU/Jxp1bqMV">CPUs</a> have specialised instructions for checking bounds, e.g., the CHK2 instruction on the <a href="/facts/Motorola_68000/3p2wt2D6">Motorola 68000</a> series.
</p><p>Research has been underway since at least 2005 regarding methods to use x86's built-in virtual memory management unit to ensure safety of array and buffer accesses.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> In 2015 Intel provided their <a href="/facts/Intel_MPX/GI1a54M2">Intel MPX</a> extensions in their <a href="/facts/Skylake_(microarchitecture)/qpcDcebM">Skylake</a> processor architecture which stores bounds in a CPU register and table in memory. As of early 2017 at least <a href="/facts/GNU_Compiler_Collection/t07jh01k">GCC</a> supports MPX extensions.
</p>
<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Dynamic_code_analysis/PLPVACCU">Dynamic code analysis</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Runtime_error_detection/CPoBsSEI">Runtime error detection</a></li>
<li><a href="/facts/Static_program_analysis/b56nr6QM">Static code analysis</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="external-links">External links</h2>
<ul><li>“<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160623195112/http://www.feustel.us/Feustel%20%26%20Associates/Advantages.pdf">On The Advantages Of Tagged Architecture</a>”, IEEE Transactions On Computers, Volume C-22, Number 7, July, 1973.</li>
<li>“<a href="http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs422/2011/bib/hoare81emperor.pdf">The Emperor’s Old Clothes</a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20171002195604/http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs422/2011/bib/hoare81emperor.pdf">Archived</a> 2017-10-02 at the <a href="/facts/Wayback_Machine/nmQ3a6JC">Wayback Machine</a>”, The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture, CACM volume 24 number 2, February 1981, pp 75–83.</li>
<li>“<a href="https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~afd/rarepapers/KendallBccRuntimeCheckingsforC.pdf">Bcc: Runtime checking for C programs</a>”, Samuel C. Kendall, Proceedings of the <a href="/facts/USENIX/2wz6aQwq">USENIX</a> Summer 1983 Conference.</li>
<li>“<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160326081542/https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~phjk/BoundsChecking.html">Bounds Checking for C</a>”, Richard Jones and Paul Kelly, Imperial College, July 1995.</li>
<li>“<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130124070111/http://public.support.unisys.com/aseries/docs/clearpath-mcp-11.0/pdf/38347639-000.pdf">ClearPath Enterprise Servers MCP Security Overview</a>”, Unisys, April 2006.</li>
<li>“<a href="http://llvm.org/pubs/2007-SOSP-SVA.pdf">Secure Virtual Architecture: A Safe Execution Environment for Commodity Operating Systems</a>”, John Criswell, Andrew Lenharth, Dinakar Dhurjati, Vikram Adve, SOSP'07 21st ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, 2007.</li>
<li>“<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160707163127/https://staff.aist.go.jp/y.oiwa/FailSafeC/index-en.html">Fail-Safe C</a>”, Yutaka Oiwa. Implementation of the Memory-safe Full ANSI-C Compiler. ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programing Language Design and Implementations (PLDI2009), June 2009.</li>
<li>“<a href="https://github.com/google/sanitizers/wiki/AddressSanitizer">address-sanitizer</a>”, Timur Iskhodzhanov, Alexander Potapenko, Alexey Samsonov, Kostya Serebryany, Evgeniy Stepanov, Dmitriy Vyukov, LLVM Dev Meeting, November 18, 2011.</li>
<li><a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/safeclib/">Safe C Library of Bounded APIs</a></li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131202222313/http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/the-safe-c-library/214502214">"The Safe C Library"</a>. <i><a href="/facts/Dr._Dobb%27s_Journal/6Qov1hUK">Dr. Dobb's Journal</a></i>. February 20, 2009. Archived from <a href="http://www.drdobbs.com/cpp/the-safe-c-library/214502214">the original</a> on December 2, 2013. Retrieved November 13, 2012.</li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131203031224/http://www.owasp.org.cn/OWASP_Conference/2011/17_.pdf">Safe C API—Concise solution of buffer overflow, The OWASP Foundation, OWASP AppSec, Beijing 2011 </a></li>
<li><a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/using_macros.html">The GNU C++ Library Manual Macros</a></li>
<li><a href="https://libcxx.llvm.org/docs/DesignDocs/DebugMode.html">libc++ 11.0 documentation Debug Mode</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>Cowan, C; Wagle, F; Calton Pu; Beattie, S; Walpole, J (1999). "Buffer overflows: Attacks and defenses for the vulnerability of the decade". Proceedings DARPA Information Survivability Conference and Exposition. DISCEX'00. Vol. 2. pp. 119–129. doi:10.1109/DISCEX.2000.821514. ISBN 978-0-7695-0490-2. S2CID 167759976. <a href="978-0-7695-0490-2" target="_blank">978-0-7695-0490-2</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>"JS++ 0.9.0: Efficient Compile Time Analysis of Out-of-Bounds Errors – JS++ Blog". 11 January 2019. Archived from the original on 2019-01-12. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190112060200/https://www.onux.com/jspp/blog/jspp-0-9-0-efficient-compile-time-analysis-of-out-of-bounds-errors/" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20190112060200/https://www.onux.com/jspp/blog/jspp-0-9-0-efficient-compile-time-analysis-of-out-of-bounds-errors/</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:3"><p>J. K. Buckle (1978). The ICL 2900 Series (PDF). Macmillan Computer Science Series. pp. 17, 77. ISBN 978-0-333-21917-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 April 2018. Retrieved 20 April 2018. <a href="978-0-333-21917-1" target="_blank">978-0-333-21917-1</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:4"><p>Lap-Chung Lam; Tzi-Cker Chiueh (2005). "Checking Array Bound Violation Using Segmentation Hardware". 2005 International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN'05). pp. 388–397. doi:10.1109/DSN.2005.25. ISBN 0-7695-2282-3. S2CID 6278708. <a href="0-7695-2282-3" target="_blank">0-7695-2282-3</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

Bounds checking open-in-new

Bounds checking