undefined | Better HN

0 pointsflatfinger6y ago0 comments

> Yes, clearly.

Unfortunately, the C Standard doesn't specify an abstraction model that is amenable to the optimization of usable programs.

> In that case, I'm not sure what we're even arguing about; the language standard might or might not standardize a way of specifying said waiver, but as long as it's not lumped in with -On or -std=blah that are necessary to get a proper compiler, it has no bearing on real-world programmers that're just trying get working code. Hell, I'd welcome a -Ounsafe or whatever, just to see what sort of horrible mess it makes, as long -Ono-unsafe exists and is the default.

The only reason for contention between compiler writers and programmers is a desire to allow compilers to optimized based upon the assumption that a program won't do certain things. The solution to that contention would be to have a means of inviting optimizations in cases where they would be safe and useful, analogous to what `restrict` would be if the definition of "based upon" wasn't so heinously broken.

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a13692099936y ago· 2 in thread

> to allow compilers to optimized based upon the assumption that a program won't do certain things.

Emphasis mine. This is always wrong. Correct (and thus legitimate-to-optize-based-on) knowledge of program behavior is derived by actually looking at what the program actually does, eg "p can never be NULL because if is was, a previous jz/bz/cmovz pc would have taken us somewhere else"[0]. Optimising "based on" undefined behaviour is only legitimate to the extent that it consists of choosing the most convenient option from the space of concrete realizations of particular undefined behaviour that are consistent with the environment (especially the hardware).

0: Note that I don't say "a previous if-else statement", because when we say "p can never be NULL", we're already in the process of looking for reasons to remove if-else statements.

flatfingerOP6y ago

There are many cases where accommodating weird corner cases would be expensive, and would only be useful for some kinds of program. Requiring that all implementations intended for all kinds of task handle corner cases that won't be relevant for most kinds of tasks would needlessly degrade efficiency. The problem is that there's no way for programs to specify which corner cases they do or don't need.

a13692099936y ago

> Requiring that all implementations intended for all kinds of task handle corner cases that won't be relevant for most kinds of tasks would needlessly degrade efficiency.

Yes, that's what undefined behaviour is for. Eg requiring that implementations handle integer overflow needlessly degrades efficiency of the overwhelming majority of tasks where integers do not if fact overflow.

> The problem is that there's no way for programs to specify which corner cases they do or don't need.

Wait, are you just asking (the situationally appropriate equivalent of) `(int32_t)((uint32_t)x+(uint32_t)y)` and/or `#pragma unsafe assert(p!=NULL)`? Because while it's a shame the standard doesn't provide standardized ways to specify these things (as I admitted upthread) programs are prefectly capable of using the former, and implementations are perfectly capable of supporting the latter; I'm just arguing that the defaults should be sensible.

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