buffer overflow - simple example

Quiz: give a simple example of buffer overflow

I feel this is a common error condition. As a serious techie (and job candidate), it's good to have a concrete idea.

When you access a C array beyond the limit, I don't know the exact error (perhaps platform dependent), but the generic condition is known as buffer overflow. See [[headfirstC]].

Not sure if there are other types of BO, but this is one common example. Confirmed.

In general, a buffer is a pre-allocated chunk of memory with a fixed capacity. A low-level construct, it can't relocate or expand -- those features would require special data structures like vector. An array in C is such a buffer. I feel in C the other major data structure is an object graph with pointers. It follows that in C, buffer usually means an array.

An array in java is not expandable either.