Static and dynamic analysis
In the previous sections, we learned about the RCA process and how to use GDB to debug a defect. This section will discuss how to analyze a program with and without executing it. The former is called dynamic analysis, while the latter is called static analysis.
Static analysis
Static analysis is used to evaluate the quality of a computer program without executing it. Although this can usually be accomplished through the use of automatic tools and code reviews/inspections, we will only focus on automatic tools in this section.
Automatic static code analysis tools are intended to compare a set of code to one or more sets of coding standards or guidelines. Typically, the terms static code analysis, static analysis, and source code analysis are used interchangeably. We may uncover many potential issues before the testing phases by scanning the whole code base with every conceivable code execution path. However, it has several limitations, which are...
