Modern C++ to the rescue

Let’s revisit the preceding examples but replace the naked arrays and naked pointers with their STL equivalents, as recommended in modern C++.

First, the array bounds example. We simply replace the naked array with a vector<int> instance and we get the following function:

int doSomeWork(int value1, int value2, int value3, int value4) {
vector<int> values;
values[0] = value1;
values[1] = value2;
values[3] = value3;
values[4] = value4;
return values[0] + values[1] + values[3] + values[4];
}
TEST_CASE("try vector bounds"){
int result = doSomeWork(1, 234, 543, 23423);
CHECK_EQ(1 + 234 + 543 + 23423, result);
}

Unfortunately, the result of running this example is not great. Neither g++ nor clang complains, and we get the following result when running the test:

TEST CASE:  try vector bounds
test.cpp:5: FATAL ERROR: test case CRASHED: SIGSEGV - Segmentation violation signal

Is std::vector<> unsafe? Well, we...