[Rd] longint
Hi
In my R package, imagine I have a C function defined:
void myfunc(int *x) {
// some code
}
but when I call it, I pass it a pointer to a longint instead of a
pointer to an int. Could this practice potentially result in a segfault?
Regards
Ben
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Re: [Rd] longint
On 15/08/2018 7:08 AM, Benjamin Tyner wrote:
Hi
In my R package, imagine I have a C function defined:
void myfunc(int *x) {
// some code
}
but when I call it, I pass it a pointer to a longint instead of a
pointer to an int. Could this practice potentially result in a segfault?
I don't think the passing would cause a segfault, but "some code" might
be expecting a positive number, and due to the type error you could pass
in a positive longint and have it interpreted as a negative int.
Duncan Murdoch
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Re: [Rd] longint
> On 15 Aug 2018, at 12:48, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>
>> On 15/08/2018 7:08 AM, Benjamin Tyner wrote:
>> Hi
>> In my R package, imagine I have a C function defined:
>> void myfunc(int *x) {
>>// some code
>> }
>> but when I call it, I pass it a pointer to a longint instead of a
>> pointer to an int. Could this practice potentially result in a segfault?
>
> I don't think the passing would cause a segfault, but "some code" might be
> expecting a positive number, and due to the type error you could pass in a
> positive longint and have it interpreted as a negative int.
Are you thinking only of a little-endian system? A 32-bit lookup of a pointer
to a 64-bit area could read the wrong half and get a completely different value.
>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
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Re: [Rd] longint
No segfault but a BIG warning from the compiler. That's because
dereferencing the pointer inside your myfunc() function will
produce an int that is not predictable i.e. it is system-dependent.
Its value will depend on sizeof(long int) (which is not
guaranteed to be 8) and on the endianness of the system.
Also if the pointer you pass in the call to the function is
an array of long ints, then pointer arithmetic inside your myfunc()
won't necessarily take you to the array element that you'd expect.
Note that there are very specific situations where you can actually
do this kind of things e.g. in the context of writing a callback
function to pass to qsort(). See 'man 3 qsort' if you are on a Unix
system. In that case pointers to void and explicit casts should
be used. If done properly, this is portable code and the compiler won't
issue warnings.
H.
On 08/15/2018 07:05 AM, Brian Ripley wrote:
On 15 Aug 2018, at 12:48, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 15/08/2018 7:08 AM, Benjamin Tyner wrote:
Hi
In my R package, imagine I have a C function defined:
void myfunc(int *x) {
// some code
}
but when I call it, I pass it a pointer to a longint instead of a
pointer to an int. Could this practice potentially result in a segfault?
I don't think the passing would cause a segfault, but "some code" might be
expecting a positive number, and due to the type error you could pass in a positive
longint and have it interpreted as a negative int.
Are you thinking only of a little-endian system? A 32-bit lookup of a pointer
to a 64-bit area could read the wrong half and get a completely different value.
Duncan Murdoch
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--
Hervé Pagès
Program in Computational Biology
Division of Public Health Sciences
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514
P.O. Box 19024
Seattle, WA 98109-1024
E-mail: hpa...@fredhutch.org
Phone: (206) 667-5791
Fax:(206) 667-1319
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Re: [Rd] longint
Thanks for the replies and for confirming my suspicion.
Interestingly, src/include/S.h uses a trick:
#define longint int
and so does the nlme package (within src/init.c).
On 08/15/2018 02:47 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
No segfault but a BIG warning from the compiler. That's because
dereferencing the pointer inside your myfunc() function will
produce an int that is not predictable i.e. it is system-dependent.
Its value will depend on sizeof(long int) (which is not
guaranteed to be 8) and on the endianness of the system.
Also if the pointer you pass in the call to the function is
an array of long ints, then pointer arithmetic inside your myfunc()
won't necessarily take you to the array element that you'd expect.
Note that there are very specific situations where you can actually
do this kind of things e.g. in the context of writing a callback
function to pass to qsort(). See 'man 3 qsort' if you are on a Unix
system. In that case pointers to void and explicit casts should
be used. If done properly, this is portable code and the compiler won't
issue warnings.
H.
On 08/15/2018 07:05 AM, Brian Ripley wrote:
On 15 Aug 2018, at 12:48, Duncan Murdoch
wrote:
On 15/08/2018 7:08 AM, Benjamin Tyner wrote:
Hi
In my R package, imagine I have a C function defined:
void myfunc(int *x) {
// some code
}
but when I call it, I pass it a pointer to a longint instead of a
pointer to an int. Could this practice potentially result in a
segfault?
I don't think the passing would cause a segfault, but "some code"
might be expecting a positive number, and due to the type error you
could pass in a positive longint and have it interpreted as a
negative int.
Are you thinking only of a little-endian system? A 32-bit lookup of
a pointer to a 64-bit area could read the wrong half and get a
completely different value.
Duncan Murdoch
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Re: [Rd] longint
Note that include/S.h contains
/*
This is a legacy header and no longer documented.
Code using it should be converted to use R.h
*/
...
/* is this a good idea? - conflicts with many versions of f2c.h */
# define longint int
S.h was meant to be used while converting to R C code written for S or S+.
S/S+ "integers" are represented as C "long ints", whose size depends on
the architecture, while R "integers" are represented as 32-bit C "ints".
"longint" was invented to hide this difference.
Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com
On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 5:32 PM, Benjamin Tyner wrote:
> Thanks for the replies and for confirming my suspicion.
>
> Interestingly, src/include/S.h uses a trick:
>
>#define longint int
>
> and so does the nlme package (within src/init.c).
>
> On 08/15/2018 02:47 PM, Hervé Pagès wrote:
>
>> No segfault but a BIG warning from the compiler. That's because
>> dereferencing the pointer inside your myfunc() function will
>> produce an int that is not predictable i.e. it is system-dependent.
>> Its value will depend on sizeof(long int) (which is not
>> guaranteed to be 8) and on the endianness of the system.
>>
>> Also if the pointer you pass in the call to the function is
>> an array of long ints, then pointer arithmetic inside your myfunc()
>> won't necessarily take you to the array element that you'd expect.
>>
>> Note that there are very specific situations where you can actually
>> do this kind of things e.g. in the context of writing a callback
>> function to pass to qsort(). See 'man 3 qsort' if you are on a Unix
>> system. In that case pointers to void and explicit casts should
>> be used. If done properly, this is portable code and the compiler won't
>> issue warnings.
>>
>> H.
>>
>>
>> On 08/15/2018 07:05 AM, Brian Ripley wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15 Aug 2018, at 12:48, Duncan Murdoch
wrote:
On 15/08/2018 7:08 AM, Benjamin Tyner wrote:
> Hi
> In my R package, imagine I have a C function defined:
> void myfunc(int *x) {
> // some code
> }
> but when I call it, I pass it a pointer to a longint instead of a
> pointer to an int. Could this practice potentially result in a
> segfault?
>
I don't think the passing would cause a segfault, but "some code" might
be expecting a positive number, and due to the type error you could pass in
a positive longint and have it interpreted as a negative int.
>>>
>>> Are you thinking only of a little-endian system? A 32-bit lookup of a
>>> pointer to a 64-bit area could read the wrong half and get a completely
>>> different value.
>>>
>>>
Duncan Murdoch
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>>
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Re: [Rd] longint
On 15 August 2018 at 20:32, Benjamin Tyner wrote: | Thanks for the replies and for confirming my suspicion. | | Interestingly, src/include/S.h uses a trick: | | #define longint int | | and so does the nlme package (within src/init.c). As Bill Dunlap already told you, this is a) ancient and b) was concerned with the int as 16 bit to 32 bit transition period. Ie a long time ago. Old C programmers remember. You should preferably not even use 'long int' on the other side but rely on the fact that all compiler nowadays allow you to specify exactly what size is used via int64_t (long), int32_t (int), ... and the unsigned cousins (which R does not have). So please receive the value as a int64_t and then cast it to an int32_t -- which corresponds to R's notion of an integer on every platform. And please note that that conversion is lossy. If you must keep 64 bits then the bit64 package by Jens Oehlschlaegel is good and eg fully supported inside data.table. We use it for 64-bit integers as nanosecond timestamps in our nanotime package (which has some converters). Dirk -- http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com | @eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] longint
On 08/16/2018 05:12 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: On 15 August 2018 at 20:32, Benjamin Tyner wrote: | Thanks for the replies and for confirming my suspicion. | | Interestingly, src/include/S.h uses a trick: | | #define longint int | | and so does the nlme package (within src/init.c). As Bill Dunlap already told you, this is a) ancient and b) was concerned with the int as 16 bit to 32 bit transition period. Ie a long time ago. Old C programmers remember. You should preferably not even use 'long int' on the other side but rely on the fact that all compiler nowadays allow you to specify exactly what size is used via int64_t (long), int32_t (int), ... and the unsigned cousins (which R does not have). So please receive the value as a int64_t and then cast it to an int32_t -- which corresponds to R's notion of an integer on every platform. Only on Intel platforms int is 32 bits. Strictly speaking int is only required to be >= 16 bits. Who knows what the size of an int is on the Sunway TaihuLight for example ;-) H. And please note that that conversion is lossy. If you must keep 64 bits then the bit64 package by Jens Oehlschlaegel is good and eg fully supported inside data.table. We use it for 64-bit integers as nanosecond timestamps in our nanotime package (which has some converters). Dirk -- Hervé Pagès Program in Computational Biology Division of Public Health Sciences Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514 P.O. Box 19024 Seattle, WA 98109-1024 E-mail: hpa...@fredhutch.org Phone: (206) 667-5791 Fax:(206) 667-1319 __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] longint
On 16/08/2018 18:33, Hervé Pagès wrote: On 08/16/2018 05:12 AM, Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote: On 15 August 2018 at 20:32, Benjamin Tyner wrote: | Thanks for the replies and for confirming my suspicion. | | Interestingly, src/include/S.h uses a trick: | | #define longint int | | and so does the nlme package (within src/init.c). As Bill Dunlap already told you, this is a) ancient and b) was concerned with the int as 16 bit to 32 bit transition period. Ie a long time ago. Old C programmers remember. You should preferably not even use 'long int' on the other side but rely on the fact that all compiler nowadays allow you to specify exactly what size is used via int64_t (long), int32_t (int), ... and the unsigned cousins Well, not all compilers. Those types were introduced in C99, but are optional in that standard and in C11 and C++11. I have not checked C++1[47], but expect they are also optional there. int_fast64_t is not optional in C99, so R uses that if int64_t is not supported. [It is easy to overlook that they are optional in C99 and at one time R assumed them.] (which R does not have). So please receive the value as a int64_t and then cast it to an int32_t -- which corresponds to R's notion of an integer on every platform. Only on Intel platforms int is 32 bits. Strictly speaking int is only required to be >= 16 bits. Who knows what the size of an int is on the Sunway TaihuLight for example ;-) R's configure checks that int is 32 bit and will not compile without it (src/main/arithmetic.c) ... so int and int32_t are the same on all platforms where the latter is defined. -- Brian D. Ripley, rip...@stats.ox.ac.uk Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, University of Oxford __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
Re: [Rd] longint
On 08/16/2018 11:30 AM, Prof Brian Ripley wrote: On 16/08/2018 18:33, Hervé Pagès wrote: ... Only on Intel platforms int is 32 bits. Strictly speaking int is only required to be >= 16 bits. Who knows what the size of an int is on the Sunway TaihuLight for example ;-) R's configure checks that int is 32 bit and will not compile without it (src/main/arithmetic.c) ... so int and int32_t are the same on all platforms where the latter is defined. Good to know. Thanks for the clarification! -- Hervé Pagès Program in Computational Biology Division of Public Health Sciences Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M1-B514 P.O. Box 19024 Seattle, WA 98109-1024 E-mail: hpa...@fredhutch.org Phone: (206) 667-5791 Fax:(206) 667-1319 __ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
