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Hey, this might be a kinda noob question, but I am just kinda nervous.
If I type something wrong into a C++ program and run it, what is the worst it could do to my computer? Is it possible that accidentally iterating through the wrong set of pointers could do irreparable damage to my machine? (windows 98)
It's possible that you could do damage if you make an assignment to memory that you don't own. Though hopefully, and most likely, your compiler will catch it and warn your or the program will simply choke and do nothing untoward.
The worst damage that I've heard of is a monitor being fried, but you can screw up just about anything that makes the computer run if you get unlucky enough, or possibly lucky enough if you consider that you found a bug in your program ;)
-Prelude
Probably not, unless you want to program your own operating system and purposely do this. Don't worry, the way Windows or Linux is programmed, it would be pretty hard to screw up your computer unless you were programming drivers.
The worst that could realistically happen is your program crashes and windows xp gives you a message and asks you to send the problem to them. Just a nusiance. Chances are %99.999999 you won't mess your computer up. Especially if you are just using cout and simple stuff.
Poking the wrong memory area can even reset your BIOS.
thats what happened to me...i will never use malloc() again.:mad:
>If I type something wrong into a C++ program and run it,
>what is the worst it could do to my computer?
Well... theoretically, you might be able to send out the pulse that sets off a nuke by chance and destroys the world. Practically, the worst thing that can possibly happen is that Windows crashes and you have to reboot.
All the described horror-stories can happen. But then, going out and crossing a road can kill you, too. The risk you do something irreperable is minimal. I code for more than 5 years now, and I never did anything worse than what could be justified by a reboot to any machine I worked with.
You can get all these if you read input from the user, and don't check the length
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...verflow+attack
If you program in a protected mode environment like Windows, the chances of writing to memory and screwing something important up are just about zero.
that would suck... imagine corrupting your bios chip with junk, and your bios chip was soldered onto your motherboard. you might as well throw it away. but i don't think any high level lang. could do this by itself?Quote:
Originally posted by Manish
Poking the wrong memory area can even reset your BIOS.
>i will never use malloc() again.
You're going to have a hard time programing in C/C++ without dynamic allocation. Why make it harder on yourself when a little extra awareness is so easy?
-Prelude