Abstract: The C programming language is expressive and flexible, but not safe; as its expressive power and flexibility are obtained through unsafe language features, and improper use of these features can lead to program bugs whose causes are hard to identify. Since C is widely used, and it is impractical to rewrite all existing C programs in safe languages, so ways must be found to make C programs safe. This paper deals with the unsafe features of C and presents a survey on existing solutions to make C programs safe. We have studied binary-level instrumentation tools, source checkers, source-level instrumentation tools and safe dialects of C, and present a comparison of different solutions, summarized the strengths and weaknesses of different classes of solutions, and show measures that could possibly improve the accuracy or alleviate the overhead of existing solutions.

Key words: Unsafe feature, C language, Instrumentation tools, Safe dialect

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