Copy and paste errors are bugs caused by misuse of local reuse of code by simple editor copy and paste commands. As we discussed in a previous post, it’s probably the most common form of code reuse but it’s plagued with potential errors. It is especially problematic if the copied code is edited incorrectly. These bugs are hard to detect, which is where advanced static analysis tools come in and CodeSonar has the capability to detect subtle differences between the copied and pasted code. In our previous post we discussed problems found in Postgres, Open Office, and llvm, we have discovered some copy and paste errors in FFmpeg (a popular open source video conversion and transcoding application.)
The first example is a copy and paste error in a file video.c in FFmpeg:
A close up of the error report:
As you can see, the copied code performs identical operations but to the frame_height instead of frame_width variable, except there’s a case where the developer forgot to change it and the frame_x on the same line. CodeSonar has detected copy and pasted code and the fact the changes weren’t consistent in the pasted code. This error was reported to the FFmpeg project as bug report #8339 and has been fixed.
Consider another example in the file ansi.c; the copied code is using bg instead of fg in the original – certainly an error that’s easy to overlook! This was also reported as bug report #8340.
A close up:
Summary
Copying and pasting code is the most common form of re-use in software development but is prone to easily overlooked mistakes. It would be better if developers avoided the practice and refactored code instead, but this is often impractical. Automated detection with static analysis alleviates the problem to some extent, by finding the errors resulting from this practice, before they make it into the final product (as they have in these examples).
Interested in learning more? Read our guide “Advanced Static Analysis for C++”
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