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According to C99the C Standard, Section 7.4.1 paragraph 1 [ISO/IEC 9899:2024],

The header <ctype.h> declares several functions useful for classifying and mapping characters. In all cases the argument is an int, the value of which shall be representable as an unsigned char or shall equal the value of the macro EOF. If the argument has any other value, the behavior is undefined.

(See also undefined behavior 107 of Appendix J113.)

Compliance with this This rule is complicated by the fact that applicable only to code that runs on platforms where the char data type can, in any implementation, be signed or unsigned.is defined to have the same range, representation, and behavior as signed char.

Following are the character classification functions that this rule addressesThe following character classification functions are affected:

Note: ^XSI denotes an X/Open System Interfaces Extension to [ ISO/IEC 9945] – POSIX ^®. The 9945—POSIX. These functions are not defined by C99the C Standard.

Rule This rule is a specific instance of STR34-C. Cast characters to unsigned char before converting to larger integer sizes is a generalization of this rule.

Noncompliant Code Example

This noncompliant code example may pass invalid values to the isspace() function.On implementations where plain char is signed, this code example is noncompliant because the parameter to isspace(), *t, is defined as a const char *, and this value might not be representable as an unsigned char:

#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
 
size_t count_preceding_whitespace(const char *s) {
  const char *t = s;

  /* possibly *t < 0 */size_t length = strlen(s) + 1;
  while (isspace(*t) && isspace(*tt - s < length)) { 
    ++t;
  }
  return t - s;
}
 

The argument to isspace() must be EOF or representable as an unsigned char; otherwise, the result is undefined.

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This compliant solution casts the character to unsigned char before passing it as an argument to the isspace() function.:

#include <ctype.h>
#include <string.h>
 
size_t count_preceding_whitespace(const char *s) {
  const char *t = s;
  size_t length = strlen(s) + 1;
  while (*t && isspace((unsigned char)*t) && (t - s < length)) { 
    ++t;
  }
  return t - s;
}
 

Risk Assessment

Passing values to character handling functions that cannot be represented as an unsigned char results in undefined program to character handling functions is undefined behavior.

Automated Detection

Related Vulnerabilities

Search for vulnerabilities resulting from the violation of this rule on the CERT website.

Related Guidelines

Key here (explains table format and definitions)

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CERT-CWE Mapping Notes

Key here for mapping notes

CWE-686 and STR37-C

Intersection( CWE-686, STR37-C) = Ø

STR37-C is not about the type of the argument passed (which is signed int), but about the restrictions placed on the value in this type (must be 0-UCHAR_MAX or EOF). I interpret ‘argument type’ to be specific to the C language, so CWE-686 does not apply to incorrect argument values, just incorrect types (which is relatively rare in C, but still possible).

CWE-704 and STR37-C

STR37-C = Subset( STR34-C)

CWE-683 and STR37-C

Intersection( CWE-683, STR37-C) = Ø

STR37-C excludes mis-ordered function arguments (assuming they pass type-checking), because there is no easy way to reliably detect violations of CWE-683.

Bibliography

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ISO/IEC 9899:1999 Section 7.4, "Character handling <ctype.h>"

MITRE CWE: CWE-704, "Incorrect Type Conversion or Cast"

MITRE CWE: CWE-686, "Function Call With Incorrect Argument Type"

Bibliography

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STR36-C. Do not specify the bound of a character array initialized with a string literal      07. Characters and Strings (STR)      STR38-C. Do not use wide-char functions on narrow-char strings and vice versaImage Added Image Added Image Added