C LanguageCommon pitfalls

Introduction

This section discusses some of the common mistakes that a C programmer should be aware of and should avoid making. For more on some unexpected problems and their causes, please see Undefined behavior

Adding a semicolon to a #define
Checking logical expression against 'true'
Comparing floating point numbers
Copying too much
Doing extra scaling in pointer arithmetic
Floating point literals are of type double by default
Forgetting to allocate one extra byte for \0
Forgetting to copy the return value of realloc into a temporary
Forgetting to free memory (memory leaks)
Ignoring return values of library functions
Incautious use of semicolons
Macros are simple string replacements
Mistakenly writing = instead of == when comparing
Misunderstanding array decay
Mixing signed and unsigned integers in arithmetic operations
Multi-line comments cannot be nested
Newline character is not consumed in typical scanf() call
Overstepping array boundaries
Passing unadjacent arrays to functions expecting "real" multidimensional arrays
Recursive function — missing out the base condition
Undefined reference errors when linking
Using character constants instead of string literals, and vice versa

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C Language

C LanguageCommon pitfalls

Introduction

Common pitfalls Related Examples