Defensive programming

Software Implementation: Coding and Integration

Published in Leanna Rierson, Developing Safety-Critical Software, 2017

Recommendation 8: Practice defensive programming. DO-248C, FAQ #32 states: “Defensive programming practices are techniques that may be used to prevent code from executing unintended or unpredictable operations by constraining the use of structures, constructs, and practices that have the potential to introduce failures in operation and errors into the code” [11]. DO-248C goes on to recommend avoidance of input data errors, nondeterminism, complexity, interface errors, and logical errors during the programming process. Defensive programming increases the overall robustness of the code in order to avoid undesirable results and to protect against unpredictable events.

Safety Demonstration of a Class 1 Smart Device

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Journal Information

Published in Nuclear Technology, 2018

Sofia Guerra, Eoin Butler

Simulation-based testing was done using the Liverpool Data Research Associates (LDRA) Testbed,10 a tool that enables simulation-based unit testing, integration testing, code coverage analysis, etc. This testing focused on the accuracy of the scaling and trimming calculations. In each case, we attempted to demonstrate that the logic of the code is correctthere are no calculation errors in the code as testedvalidation and defensive programming have been implemented as neededthe code satisfies the higher-level system and software requirements.

Defensive programming

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