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Re: Regarding assignment to struct

From Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com>
Newsgroups comp.lang.c
Subject Re: Regarding assignment to struct
Date 2025-05-05 07:56 -0700
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <86selj3y3b.fsf@linuxsc.com> (permalink)
References <vv338b$16oam$1@dont-email.me> <vv4j9p$33vhj$1@dont-email.me> <86plgo7ahu.fsf@linuxsc.com> <vv9hu7$3nomg$1@dont-email.me>

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Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> writes:

> On Sun 5/4/2025 6:48 AM, Tim Rentsch wrote:
>
>>> One dark corner this feature has, is that in C (as opposed to C++) the
>>> result of an assignment operator is an rvalue, which can easily lead
>>> to some interesting consequences related to structs with arrays
>>> inside.
>>
>> I'm curious to know what interesting consequences you mean here.  Do
>> you mean something other than cases that have undefined behavior?
>
> I'm referring to the matter of the address identity of the resultant
> rvalue object.  At first, "address identity of rvalue" might sound
> strange, but the standard says that there's indeed an object tied to
> such rvalue, and once we start applying array-to-pointer conversion
> (and use `[]` operator), lvalues and addresses quickly come into the
> picture.
>
> The standard says in 6.2.4/8:
>
> "A non-lvalue expression with structure or union type, where the
> structure or union contains a member with array type [...]
> refers to an object with automatic storage duration and temporary
> lifetime.  Its lifetime begins when the expression is evaluated and its
> initial value is the value of the expression.  Its lifetime ends when
> the evaluation of the containing full expression ends.  [...] Such an
> object need not have a unique address."
> https://port70.net/~nsz/c/c11/n1570.html#6.2.4p8

The last sentence there is not present in N1570.  Apparently it was
introduced later, in C17.  (My appreciation to Keith Thompson for
reporting this.)

> I wondering what the last sentence is intended to mean ("... need not
> have a unique address").  At the first sight, the intent seems to be
> obvious:  it simply says that such temporary objects might repeatedly
> appear (and disappear) at the same location in storage, which is a
> natural thing to expect.

Ahh, I see now what your concern is.

> But is it, perhaps, intended to also allow such temporaries to have
> addresses identical to regular named objects?  It is not immediately
> clear to me.

My reading of the post-C11 standards is that they allow the "new"
object to overlap with already existing objects, including both
declared objects and objects whose storage was allocated using
malloc().

> And when I make the following experiment with GCC and Clang
>
>   #include <stdio.h>
>
>   struct S { int a[10]; };
>
>   int main()
>   {
>     struct S a, b = { 0 };
>     int *pa, *pb, *pc;
>
>     pa = &a.a[5];
>     pb = &b.a[5];
>     pc = &(a = b).a[5];
>
>     printf("%p %p %p\n", pa, pb, pc);
>   }
>
> I consistently get the following output from GCC
>
>   0x7fff73eb5544 0x7fff73eb5574 0x7fff73eb5544
>
> And this is what I get from Clang
>
>   0x7ffd2b8dbf44 0x7ffd2b8dbf14 0x7ffd2b8dbee4
>
> As you can see, GCC apparently took C++-like approach to this
> situation.  The returned "temporary" is not really a separate temporary
> at all, but actually `a` itself.

Yeah.

> Meanwhile, in Clang all three pointers are different, i.e. Clang
> decided to actually create a separate temporary object for the result
> of the assignment.

Which in my reading of the standard is required under C11 rules.
I have reproduced your results under -std=c11 -pedantic, for both
gcc and clang.

> I have a strong feeling that GCC's behavior is non-conforming.  The
> last sentence of 6.2.4/8 is not supposed to permit "projecting" the
> resultant temporaries onto existing named objects.  I could be wrong...

My judgment is that the behavior under gcc is non-conforming if the
compilation was done using C11 semantics.  Under C17 or later rules
the gcc behavior is allowed (and may have been what prompted the
change in C17, but that is just speculation on my part).  In any
case I understand now what you were getting at.  Thank you for
bringing this hazard to the group's attention.

I hope someone files a bug report for gcc using -std=c11 rules,
because what gcc does under that setting (along with -pedantic)
is surely at odds with the plain reading of the C11 standard,
for the situation being discussed here.

Editorial comment:  here is yet another case where post-C11 changes
to the C standard seem ill advised, and another reason not to use
any version of the ISO C standard for C17 or later.  And it's
disappointing that gcc -std=c11 -pedantic strays into the realm of
non-conforming behavior.

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Thread

Regarding assignment to struct Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> - 2025-05-02 18:34 +0000
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-02 13:17 -0700
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct Barry Schwarz <schwarzb@delq.com> - 2025-05-02 13:35 -0700
    That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2025-05-02 20:44 +0000
      Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> - 2025-05-03 01:13 +0000
        Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-03 02:28 +0000
        Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-05-03 06:17 +0200
        Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> - 2025-05-03 04:31 +0000
          Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> - 2025-05-03 05:11 +0000
            Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-05-05 12:30 +0200
              Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> - 2025-05-05 18:47 +0000
          Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-04 11:05 -0700
        Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2025-05-03 00:47 -0400
        Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-04 10:59 -0700
          Re: That depends... (Was: Regarding assignment to struct) Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> - 2025-05-04 18:16 +0000
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-05-02 21:35 +0000
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> - 2025-05-03 01:43 +0000
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-03 01:14 -0700
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-03 22:46 +0000
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-03 17:37 -0700
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2025-05-03 23:38 -0400
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2025-05-04 09:25 +0000
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-04 14:27 +0000
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-04 18:45 +0200
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-04 13:20 -0700
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-05 00:41 +0000
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-04 18:42 -0700
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 21:57 -0700
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2025-05-04 21:08 -0400
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-03 22:47 +0000
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-03 22:46 +0000
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-04 06:48 -0700
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-04 22:22 -0700
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-05 11:12 +0300
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-05 01:29 -0700
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-05 12:01 +0300
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 07:14 -0700
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-05 08:45 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-05 20:20 +0300
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 22:26 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-29 05:11 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2025-05-29 12:57 -0400
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 13:27 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 17:04 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 17:53 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-06 11:35 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-29 05:19 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-29 21:05 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-05-06 17:36 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-06 20:46 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-06 19:22 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-07 09:37 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-29 05:49 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-05-29 16:33 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-29 21:20 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-29 21:15 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-29 14:54 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2025-05-30 14:29 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-30 10:50 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-06 13:06 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-29 05:21 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-05-29 16:43 +0200
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-29 05:14 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-29 13:56 -0700
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 07:03 -0700
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 01:26 -0700
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-05 10:14 -0700
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-08 12:45 -0700
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-08 22:20 +0200
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 01:34 -0700
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-05 12:03 +0300
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2025-05-05 11:30 +0000
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 13:32 -0700
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com> - 2025-05-05 21:10 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 22:57 -0700
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 22:40 -0700
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 06:34 -0700
            Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 13:43 -0700
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> - 2025-05-06 19:06 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-06 13:21 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> - 2025-05-07 19:09 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-07 14:23 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> - 2025-05-08 12:58 +0000
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-07 21:17 -0700
              Re: Regarding assignment to struct Andrey Tarasevich <noone@noone.net> - 2025-05-29 05:36 -0700
                Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-29 14:36 -0700
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 07:56 -0700
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-05 20:00 +0200
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct NotAorB <atod101101@gmail.com> - 2025-05-12 16:38 -0400
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-03 11:46 +0200
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Muttley@dastardlyhq.com - 2025-05-05 08:50 +0000
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-05 13:34 +0200
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-05 13:53 -0700
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org - 2025-05-06 07:16 +0000
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-06 11:46 +0200
          Re: Regarding assignment to struct Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org - 2025-05-06 10:18 +0000
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-06 16:34 +0300
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct Richard Damon <richard@damon-family.org> - 2025-05-03 21:42 -0400
    Re: Regarding assignment to struct Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> - 2025-05-04 11:01 +0300
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-05-04 08:34 +0000
        Re: Regarding assignment to struct David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2025-05-04 14:06 +0200
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-05 21:25 -0700
      Re: Regarding assignment to struct Rosario19 <Ros@invalid.invalid> - 2025-05-12 11:23 +0200
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2025-05-04 07:49 -0700
  Re: Regarding assignment to struct Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2025-05-04 14:09 -0700

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