MSVC gives you options for inserting runtime debugging code, such as bounds checking. These are options - the compiler is just doing what you're telling it to. If you don't want the compiler to do this stuff, edit your project properties.

N.B. these validation options are separate from the optimization and debug-database options.

yeah.

normally bounds-checks aren't a bad thing, but is kind of pointless with a constant index into a fixed size array, since otherwise it is fairly obvious whether the bounds-check will pass or fail.

luckily, it was fairly trivial to side-step though, via using a pointer instead in this case.

ADD:

just discovered I can generate optimized code and have debug symbols via "/O2 /Zi".

well, this is good to know I guess...

(I tried doing similar once before with an older version of MSVC, but it didn't work.)