Our website uses cookies to enhance your browsing experience.
Accept
to the top
close form

Fill out the form in 2 simple steps below:

Your contact information:

Step 1
Congratulations! This is your promo code!

Desired license type:

Step 2
Team license
Enterprise license
** By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement
close form
Request our prices
New License
License Renewal
--Select currency--
USD
EUR
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
Free PVS‑Studio license for Microsoft MVP specialists
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
To get the licence for your open-source project, please fill out this form
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
I am interested to try it on the platforms:
* By clicking this button you agree to our Privacy Policy statement

close form
check circle
Message submitted.

Your message has been sent. We will email you at


If you haven't received our response, please do the following:
check your Spam/Junk folder and click the "Not Spam" button for our message.
This way, you won't miss messages from our team in the future.

>
>
>
V1066. The 'SysFreeString' function sho…
menu mobile close menu
Analyzer diagnostics
General Analysis (C++)
General Analysis (C#)
General Analysis (Java)
Micro-Optimizations (C++)
Diagnosis of 64-bit errors (Viva64, C++)
Customer specific requests (C++)
MISRA errors
AUTOSAR errors
OWASP errors (C#)
Problems related to code analyzer
Additional information
toggle menu Contents

V1066. The 'SysFreeString' function should be called only for objects of the 'BSTR' type.

Oct 23 2020

The analyzer has detected a call of the 'SysFreeString' function on an object whose type is different from 'BSTR'.

The 'SysFreeString' function is supposed to work only with the type 'BSTR'. Breaking this rule may lead to memory deallocation issues.

Consider a simple synthetic example:

#include <atlbase.h>

void foo()
{
  CComBSTR str { L"I'll be killed twice" };
  // ....
  SysFreeString(str); //+V1066
}

An object of type 'CComBSTR' is passed to the 'SysFreeString' function. This class is a wrapper over the 'BSTR' type and has an overloaded implicit-conversion operator 'operator BSTR()' that returns a pointer to the wrapped BSTR string. Because of that, the code above will compile correctly.

However, this code is incorrect. After the 'SysFreeString' function has freed the resource owned by the 'str' object, the object will go out of scope and its destructor will be invoked. The destructor will re-release the already freed resource, thus causing undefined behavior.

Such behavior sometimes occurs even when an object of the 'BSTR' type itself is passed to the 'SysFreeString' function. For example, PVS-Studio will report the following code:

#include <atlbase.h>

void foo()
{
  CComBSTR str = { L"a string" };
  BSTR bstr = str;

  str.Empty();
  SysFreeString(bstr); //+V1066
}

Since 'CComBSTR::operator BSTR()' returns a pointer to its own field, both objects will be owning the same resource after the 'BSTR bstr = str;' assignment. The 'str.Empty();' call will free this resource, and the subsequent call 'SysFreeString(bstr)' will attempt to free it once again.

One of the ways to avoid shared ownership is to create a copy or to use the 'CComBSTR::Detach()' method. For example, the analyzer will not report the following code:

#include <atlbase.h>

void foo()
{
  CComBSTR ccombstr = { L"I am a happy CComBSTR" };
  BSTR bstr1 = ccombstr.Copy();
  SysFreeString(bstr1); // OK

  BSTR bstr2;
  ccombstr.CopyTo(&bstr2);
  SysFreeString(bstr2); // OK

  BSTR bstr3 = ccombstr.Detach();
  SysFreeString(bstr3); // OK
}

This diagnostic is classified as: