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From: alexfrunews@gmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Optimization techniques
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2019 01:33:48 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: Compilers Central
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On Thursday, April 25, 2019 at 1:14:54 PM UTC-7, Martin Ward wrote:
...
> With the current situation, anyone wanting to avoid
> undefined behaviour (and don't we all?) has to write code like
> this for any signed operation:
>
> signed int sum;
> if (((si_b > 0) && (si_a > (INT_MAX - si_b))) ||
>      ((si_b < 0) && (si_a < (INT_MIN - si_b)))) {
>    /* Handle error */
> } else {
>    sum = si_a + si_b;
> }

In this day and age it is a shame that the language that is still very
much alive does not provide the programmer with easy-to-use (and
implement!) tools to perform/handle:

- overflow checks like the above for +, -, *, /,
  %, <<, both signed and unsigned
- mathematically meaningful comparison of signed
  and unsigned integers
- arithmetic right shift out of the box
- ditto rotation
- arbitrary precision arithmetic (for integers
  of compile-time-constant length)
- endianness at last
- (I probably forget many more)

Often times the desired functionality is already in the CPU or needs
just a few more instructions but there's no simple, short and standard
way to tell the compiler to generate the code for the common problem.
It's always compiler extensions (or dependencies on specific
compilers), #ifdefs, inline (and non-inline) assembly, code like shown
above, reinvented wheels all the way, over and over again, from
project to project.  I understand that C is minimalistic, but I think
it needs to step up a bit.

When I'm handling arbitrary, potentially maliciously crafted data, I
want to have those overflow checks, but I don't want to be burdened
with what the compiler can easily do for me but fails to deliver year
after year just because it's not in the language.

What may have been deemed sufficient back in the 80's is no more.
Because the Internet.  Deprecating gets() is nice but doesn't quite
cut it.

Alex
P.S. this should've probably gone to some C group.