Missing ‘.length’ in comparison¶
ID: js/missing-dot-length-in-comparison
Kind: problem
Security severity:
Severity: warning
Precision: high
Tags:
- quality
- reliability
- correctness
Query suites:
- javascript-security-and-quality.qls
Click to see the query in the CodeQL repository
It is very common to check whether a number is within the bounds of an array or string using a comparison of form i < array.length, and later perform an indexing access array[i]. If this comparison is mistyped as i < array, a type coercion will be performed, which almost never has the intended effect.
Recommendation¶
Check if one of the operands is an array or a string, and make sure to compare against its length, not against the value itself.
Example¶
The following example shows a mistyped loop condition i < array:
for (var i = 0; i < array; ++i) {
count += array[i]
}
If the above is executed with array set to [3,5,7], the loop will not run at all. The error can be corrected by changing the loop condition to i < array.length:
for (var i = 0; i < array.length; ++i) {
count += array[i]
}
References¶
Mozilla Developer Network: Array.length