PVS-Studio: V641 - false positive for WIN API structs

Question

The last member WCHAR Name[1] is assumed to be a string. It's a well-known technic.

// c:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\um\DbgHelp.h

typedef struct _SYMBOL_INFOW {
    ULONG       SizeOfStruct;
    ULONG       TypeIndex;        // Type Index of symbol
    ULONG64     Reserved[2];
    ULONG       Index;
    ULONG       Size;
    ULONG64     ModBase;          // Base Address of module comtaining this symbol
    ULONG       Flags;
    ULONG64     Value;            // Value of symbol, ValuePresent should be 1
    ULONG64     Address;          // Address of symbol including base address of module
    ULONG       Register;         // register holding value or pointer to value
    ULONG       Scope;            // scope of the symbol
    ULONG       Tag;              // pdb classification
    ULONG       NameLen;          // Actual length of name
    ULONG       MaxNameLen;
    WCHAR       Name[1];          // Name of symbol
} SYMBOL_INFOW, *PSYMBOL_INFOW;

But the following code generates V641. Why?

PSYMBOL_INFOW pSym = NULL;
pSym = (PSYMBOL_INFOW) malloc(sizeof(SYMBOL_INFOW) + MAX_SYM_NAME);

Answer 1

Thank you for the interest to our product and the issues you described. We will examine the provided code fragments and will try to fix these issues.