FP on cobol:S3921 when accessing an array of which the size is defined by a 78-level field

SonarQube Server / Community Build
1

We are scanning Acucobol sources.
When a program contains an array of which the size is defined with a 78-level variable,
the size of the array is not calculated correctly. The value of the OCCURS clause is taken as 1.
When directly using a number in the OCCURS clause there is no problem.
See the example program below:

       IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
       PROGRAM-ID. PP0044.
       WORKING-STORAGE SECTION.
       78  ARRAY-SIZE VALUE 5.
       01  ARRAY.
           03  ARRAY-ELEMENT  PIC X(01) OCCURS ARRAY-SIZE.
       PROCEDURE DIVISION.
       MAIN SECTION.
           MOVE "ABC" TO ARRAY
           GOBACK
           .

Versions used:
Cobol: Acucobol 10.2.1
SonarQube: * 10.2.1 (build 78527)
SonarScanner 5.0.1.3006

Please fix this FP.

4

This is indeed a problem in our analyzer.
I created SONARCOBOL-1690 to track it.

Thanks a lot for your feedback and the short reproducer!

7

Hi Pierre-Yves,

Although we have not seen a solution posted for this issue, we see that it no longer occurs in SQ 10.4
Maybe it was fixed as a side-effect of another fix?

8

Hi Jos,

Sorry for the late reply.
What makes you think that this false positive is fixed in SQ 10.4?
According to my tests, it’s still there.

9

Pierre-Yves,

You are right.
A collegue switched off the rule, without me knowing about it.
This lead to a wrong conclusion.
I apologise for the confusion and inconvenience caused.

Kind regards,

Jos Abrahams