In computing a storage violation is a hardware or software fault that occurs when a task attempts to access an area of computer storage which it is not permitted to access.
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Types of storage violation
Storage violation can, for instance, consist of reading from, writing to, or freeing storage not owned by the task. A common type of storage violation is known as a stack buffer overflow where a program attempts to exceed the limits set for its call stack. It can also refer to attempted modification of memory "owned" by another thread where there is incomplete (or no) memory protection.
Avoidance of storage violations
Storage violations can occur in transaction systems such as CICS in circumstances where it is possible to write to storage not owned by the transaction; such violations can be reduced by enabling features such as storage protection and transaction isolation.
Detection of storage violations
In systems such as CICS, storage violations are sometimes detected (by the CICS kernel) by the use of "signatures", which can be tested to see if they have been overlaid.
Some programming languages use software bounds checking to prevent these occurrences.
Some program debugging software will also detect violations during testing.