Comparison of Incompatible Types

The product performs a comparison between two entities, but the entities are of different, incompatible types that cannot be guaranteed to provide correct results when they are directly compared.


Description

In languages that are strictly typed but support casting/conversion, such as C or C++, the programmer might assume that casting one entity to the same type as another entity will ensure that the comparison will be performed correctly, but this cannot be guaranteed. In languages that are not strictly typed, such as PHP or JavaScript, there may be implicit casting/conversion to a type that the programmer is unaware of, causing unexpected results; for example, the string "123" might be converted to a number type. See examples.

See Also

Comprehensive Categorization: Comparison

Weaknesses in this category are related to comparison.

Data Processing Errors

Weaknesses in this category are typically found in functionality that processes data. Data processing is the manipulation of input to retrieve or save information.

Comprehensive CWE Dictionary

This view (slice) covers all the elements in CWE.

Weaknesses Introduced During Implementation

This view (slice) lists weaknesses that can be introduced during implementation.

Weakness Base Elements

This view (slice) displays only weakness base elements.


Common Weakness Enumeration content on this website is copyright of The MITRE Corporation unless otherwise specified. Use of the Common Weakness Enumeration and the associated references on this website are subject to the Terms of Use as specified by The MITRE Corporation.