On 20/08/2010 17:38, bearophile wrote:
Three good blog posts about undefined behaviour in C and C++:
http://blog.regehr.org/archives/213
http://blog.regehr.org/archives/226
http://blog.regehr.org/archives/232
In those posts (and elsewhere) the expert author gives several good bites to
the ass of most compiler writers.
Among other things in those three posts he talks about two programs as:
import std.c.stdio: printf;
void main() {
printf("%d\n", -int.min);
}
import std.stdio: writeln;
void main() {
enum int N = (1L).sizeof * 8;
auto max = (1L<< (N - 1)) - 1;
writeln(max);
}
I believe that D can't be considered a step forward in system language
programming until it gives a much more serious consideration for
integer-related overflows (and integer-related undefined behaviour).
The good thing is that Java is a living example that even if you remove most
integer-related undefined behaviours your Java code is still able to run as
fast as C and sometimes faster (on normal desktops).
Bye,
bearophile
Interesting post.
There is a important related issue here. It should be noted that, even
though the article and the C FAQ say:
"
The C FAQ defines “undefined behavior” like this:
Anything at all can happen; the Standard imposes no requirements.
The program may fail to compile, or it may execute incorrectly (either
crashing or silently generating incorrect results), or it may
fortuitously do exactly what the programmer intended.
"
this definition of "undefined behavior" is not used consistently by C
programmers, or even by more official sources such as books, or even the
C standards. A trivial example:
foo(printf("Hello"), printf("World"));
Since the evaluation order of arguments in not defined in C, these two
printfs can be executed in any of the two possible orders. The behavior
is not specified, it is up to the implementation, to the compiler
switches, etc..
Many C programmers would say that such code has/is/produces undefined
behavior, however, that is clearly not “undefined behavior” as per the
definition above. A correct compiler cannot cause the code above to
execute incorrectly, crash, calculate PI, format you hard disk,
whatever, like on the other cases. It has to do everything it is
supposed to do, and the only "undefined" thing is the order of
evaluation, but the code is not "invalid".
I don't like this term "undefined behavior". It is an unfortunate C
legacy that leads to unnecessary confusion and misunderstanding, not
just in conversation, but often in coding as well. It would not be so
bad if the programmers had the distinction clear at least in their
minds, or in the context of their discussion. But that is often not the
case.
I've called before for this term to be avoided in D vocabulary, mainly
because Walter often (ab)used the term as per the usual C legacy.
The “undefined behavior” as per the C FAQ should be called something
else, like "invalid behavior". Code that when given valid inputs causes
invalid behavior should be called invalid code.
(BTW, this maps directly to the concept of contract violations.)
--
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
