How does memory management in Java and C# differ?
- by David Johnstone
I was reading through 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors and one of the entries is for Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input. It suggests using a language with features to prevent or mitigate this problem, and says:
For example, many languages that
perform their own memory management,
such as Java and Perl, are not subject
to buffer overflows. Other languages,
such as Ada and C#, typically provide
overflow protection, but the
protection can be disabled by the
programmer.
I was not aware that Java and C# differed in any meaningful way with regard to memory management. How is it that Java is not subject to buffer overflows, while C# only protects against overflows? And how is it possible to disable this protection in C#?
