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Re: [ub] C provenance semantics proposal

From: Jens Maurer <Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden]>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 15:59:22 +0200
On 11/04/2019 14.58, Arthur O'Dwyer wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 6:28 PM Jens Maurer <Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden]
> <mailto:Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden]>> wrote:
>
> On 11/04/2019 00.06, Jens Gustedt wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Apr 2019 23:40:37 +0200 Jens Maurer
> <Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden] <mailto:Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden]>> wrote:
> >>> Inter-object equality comparison has to be supported,
> >>
> >> "Supported" in the sense of "getting a well-defined, stable answer",
> >> I presume. Why do you need that?
> >
> > Because this is all that pointer equality is about. I have to be
> able
> > to compare pointers to whatever objects for equality. If I can only
> > use it for pointers for which I know that they point to the same
> > object, I don't a need a `==` operator in the language :)
>
> Not quite. It does make sense to compare pointers to subobjects
> within the same larger object,
>
>
> And also to compare pointers to different objects.
>
> void somefunc(int n) {
> char local_buffer[100];
> char *p = (n > 100 ? malloc(n) : local_buffer);
> use(p);
> if (p != local_buffer) free(p);
> }
>
> This idiom is supported by standard C and C++ today (that is, equality
> comparison of arbitrary pointers is supported today), and there is lots
> of code in the wild that relies on this idiom continuing to work.
> (libstdc++'s std::string
> <https://github.com/gcc-mirror/gcc/blob/master/libstdc%2B%2B-v3/include/bits/basic_string.h#L222>
> and libc++'s std::function
> <https://github.com/llvm-mirror/libcxx/blob/master/include/functional#L1732>,
> for example. But also a lot of industry code.) Any proposal to change
> C/C++ so that this idiom stops working would be a non-starter IMHO. So
> it's good that this "provenance" work doesn't propose to change this
> aspect of C/C++.

Thanks, this is a useful example.

I think I confused myself by reading the special "one-past-the-end
may or may not be equal to the next object" exception in C++
as applying to any disjoint object. Sorry for the noise.

Jens

Received on 2019-04-11 15:59:28