D11.3 Surfaces a Bug in 8-Year-Old Code that reads DBF file...

[Steve Maughan 26]

I recently updated to D11.3 for AlignMix, our mapping solution. We were previously using D11.1. We have old code that reads a DBF file. This is used to read the DBF files associated with ESRI Shapefiles that contain geographic data. The code had worked for eight years without a problem. It still works in 32 bit mode but now doesn't work in 64 bit mode and gives an error. The DBF reading routine contains code that casts blocks of memory as strings etc — this is probably the root of the problem.

 

If anyone is interested, I've attached a sample project that reads a DBF file using the code.

 

In the sample project I only get two warnings:

 

[dcc32 Warning] uDBF.pas(155): W1000 Symbol 'StrPas' is deprecated: 'Moved to the AnsiStrings unit'

[dcc32 Warning] uDBF.pas(216): W1057 Implicit string cast from 'AnsiString' to 'string'

 

Are these relevant?

 

Question: what changed between D11.1 and D11.3 that could cause this type of problem? Was there any change involving casting of strings in 64 bit mode?

 

All help appreciated!

 

Steve

DBF-64-Bit-Bug.zip

[Attila Kovacs 675]

"Data" is not initialized in your demo

 

GetMem(Data, iRecordLen);

 

and that's it, it ponts to trash

[Steve Maughan 26]

21 minutes ago, Attila Kovacs said:

"Data" is not initialized in your demo

 

GetMem(Data, iRecordLen);

 

and that's it, it ponts to trash

Thanks Attila, but I didn't think "Data" needed to be initialized. The GetMem function is asking the OS to allocate some memory of length "iRecord", and sets "Data" to point to the start of the allocated memory. Is this not correct?

 

— Steve  

[Attila Kovacs 675]

7 minutes ago, Steve Maughan said:

Thanks Attila, but I didn't think "Data" needed to be initialized. The GetMem function is asking the OS to allocate some memory of length "iRecord", and sets "Data" to point to the start of the allocated memory. Is this not correct? 

 

— Steve  

Yes, but then you set up the fields' FData to point to there +iTmp and later you are trying to read the data from there, and AV raises.

But if I'm wrong just ignore me, I had only a minute to look into it.

 

Edited January 9, 2024 by Attila Kovacs

[Cristian Peța 122]

 

    FData : DWORD;

And should be 8 bytes on 64 bit. Something like PAnsiChar.

        Fields^[iFieldCount].FData := DWORD(Data + iTmp);

It is wrong to cast to DWORD for 64 bit.

[Cristian Peța 122]

It is working like compiled in D11.1 if you disable ASLR from linking options.

[Steve Maughan 26]

@Cristian Peța you found it!! When I disable the ASLR in Delphi 11.3 it also runs fine in 64 bit mode. That makes sense.  MANY THANKS!

 

Now the question is, how do I make it work with ASLR enabled.

 

— Steve

 

 

[Cristian Peța 122]

I used FieldData array to store offsets instead of FData that must remain 4 bytes.

Maybe there are better approaches but it was faster so.

This is a fast patch and not optimal.

 

uDBF.pas

Edited January 9, 2024 by Cristian Peța

[Steve Maughan 26]

Hi Cristian — many thanks but the file you uploaded is identical to the original. Is there a patched version? I owe you bigtime!

 

— Steve

[Cristian Peța 122]

Sorry, uploaded wrong file...

uDBF.pas

Edited January 9, 2024 by Cristian Peța

[Cristian Peța 122]

Now I see that FieldData can be defined for max 256 fields.

    FieldData: array [0..255] of PAnsiChar;

And get rid of setting the length of FieldData for every field.

uDBF.pas

[Brian Evans 126]

1 hour ago, Steve Maughan said:

@Cristian Peța you found it!! When I disable the ASLR in Delphi 11.3 it also runs fine in 64 bit mode. That makes sense.  MANY THANKS!

 

Now the question is, how do I make it work with ASLR enabled.

 

— Steve

 

It will crash if the top thirty-two bits of any pointer handled by the buggy code are not all zeroes. That just happens more often if ASLR is enabled or all the time if ASLR + the high entropy allocator is enabled. 

 

 

[Steve Maughan 26]

@Cristian Peța this version works perfectly. Many thanks — I owe you one!!

 

@Brian Evans Thanks — that makes sense.

 

@Attila Kovacs thanks for the input!

 

— Steve

[Remy Lebeau 1633]

@Steve Maughan you might want to read: Converting 32-bit Delphi Applications to 64-bit Windows since the original code was doing things that were not meant to be done in 64bit builds to begin with.

[Steve Maughan 26]

Thanks @Remy Lebeau — I'll take a look.