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- ISO/IEC 9899:2011 ISO/IEC, Programming Languages—C, 3rd ed. [ISO/IEC 9899:2011]
- ISO/IEC 9899:2011/Cor.1:2012, Technical Corrigendum 1
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The C Standard documents existing practice where possible. That is, most features must be tested in an an implementation before being included in the standard. The CERT C Coding Standard has a different purpose: to establish a set of best practices, which sometimes requires introducing new practices that may not be widely known or used when existing practices are inadequate. To put it a different way, the CERT C Coding Standard attempts to drive change rather than just document it.
For example, the optional but normative Annex K, "Bounds“Bounds-Checking Interfaces," ” introduced in C11, is gaining support but at present is implemented by only a few vendors. It introduces functions such as memcpy_s(), which serve the purpose of security by adding the destination buffer size to the API. A forward-looking document could not reasonably ignore these functions simply because they are not yet widely implemented. The base C Standard is more widely implemented than Annex K, but even if it were not, it is the direction in which the industry is moving. Developers of new C code, especially, need guidance that is usable, on and makes the best use of, the compilers and tools that are now being developed and are being supported into the future.
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In general, the CERT coding standards try to avoid the inclusion of controversial rules that lack a broad consensus.
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