# V2556. MISRA. Use of a pointer to FILE when the associated stream has already been closed.

This diagnostic rule is based on the software development guidelines developed by MISRA (Motor Industry Software Reliability Association).

This rule applies only to C. Using a pointer to the standard type 'FILE' after the associated stream has been already closed may lead to errors because that object will be having an undefined state.

Example of non-compliant code:

    FILE* f = fopen("/path/to/file.log", "w");
    if (f == NULL) { .... }
    fprintf(f, "....");

    if (....) // something went wrong
    {
      fclose(f);
      fprintf(f, "...."); // Print log information
                          // after stream has been released.
    }

This diagnostic is classified as:

MISRA-C-2012-22.6 MISRA-C-2023-22.6