Bounds Checking for Open Source Code?

roarl asks: "Is anyone working on an Open Source bounds checking system? (A system that checks a program at runtime for array out of bounds access, reading uninitialized memory, memory leaks and so on). I've been using BoundsChecker for some time and believe me, there are situations where you know you are going to spend hours debugging unless you let BoundsChecker sort it out for you. But it annoys me that I have to transfer (and sometimes port) the buggy program to Windows each time. I'd much rather stay in Linux. Insure works on Linux. I haven't tried Insure for some time, but last time I tried I wasn't especially impressed. Purify seems still not to support Linux, but on other Unix platforms it works great. The problem with all of these products is that they are so da*n expensive. So it makes me wonder, are all Open Source programmers doing without them? If so, what can we expect of the quality of Open Source developed programs? If not, is there a free alternative?"

Comments

A general case

[big_hairy_mama]

Isn't bounds checking just a specialized case for checking any type of access to uninitialized memory? There are several tools that provide replacements for malloc() that can track *all* memory allocation, and some, like Valgrind, provide almost a virtual machine that tracks basically everything your program does. Any time you read, write, or allocate memory, Valgrind will track it, and tell you if it is in error. Like I said, array bounds checking is just a special case of this.