On the minimum distance of composite-length BCH codes

We derive a theorem which generalizes Theorem 3 in Chapter 9 of the book "The Theory of Error-Correcting Codes" by F.J. MacWilliams and N.J.A. Sloane (North-Holland, 1977). By this theorem, we are able to give several classes of BCH codes of composite length whose minimum distance does not exceed the BCH bound. Moreover, we show that this theorem can also be used to determine the true minimum distance of some other cyclic codes with composite-length.