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Groups > comp.lang.c > #151230

Re: memcpy can't take null.

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On 4/8/20 5:06 AM, Malcolm McLean wrote:
>>
> If Nemployees is non-zero whilst the pointer employees points to invalid
> memory, it's likely that the bug will be discovered soon enough.
> But if Nemployees is zero and employees is NULL, then the loops through
> the employees array will all be no-ops and have defined, correct
> behaviour. It's only if you call a library function like memcpy that
> the code becomes incorrect.
> 

The issue is that since memcpy is a very basic function, you want it as
efficient as possible. On some machines, it may be quicker to load the
pointers into registers that might object to having a null pointer
before processing the loop, and thus the machine might trap on a null
pointer.

Also, if you really want this safe version, you can make a memcpy_safe0
function defined as:

void* memcpy_safe0(void* dest, const void* src, size_t num) {
  if(num) return memcpy(dest, src, num);
  else return dest;
}

Note, that if the library function includes the check, there is no way
to wrap it to remove that check, thus it make sense to make the standard
version the quick one.

Note that in the above, with a decent optimizing compiler, the call to
memcpy above is tail-recursive, so becomes just a jump (or an inline
expansion of the memcpy code), and the above definition could be made
inline so perhaps the compiler could know if num was zero or not an
optimize the code.

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Thread

memcpy can't take null. Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> - 2020-04-05 06:47 -0700
  Re: memcpy can't take null. Öö Tiib <ootiib@hot.ee> - 2020-04-05 07:30 -0700
    Re: memcpy can't take null. Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-04-05 14:39 -0400
      Re: memcpy can't take null. Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-04-06 18:46 +0200
        Re: memcpy can't take null. Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-04-06 12:45 -0700
          Re: memcpy can't take null. Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2020-04-07 07:28 +0200
  Re: memcpy can't take null. Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-04-05 16:00 -0700
    Re: memcpy can't take null. Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2020-04-05 18:29 -0600
      Re: memcpy can't take null. scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2020-04-06 18:08 +0000
        Re: memcpy can't take null. Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu> - 2020-04-06 15:44 -0600
    Re: memcpy can't take null. Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> - 2020-04-06 13:54 -0700
      Re: memcpy can't take null. Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-04-06 14:30 -0700
  Re: memcpy can't take null. Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2020-04-06 01:20 +0100
  Re: memcpy can't take null. Siri Cruise <chine.bleu@yahoo.com> - 2020-04-05 19:09 -0700
  Re: memcpy can't take null. Guillaume <message@bottle.org> - 2020-04-07 16:50 +0200
    Re: memcpy can't take null. Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> - 2020-04-07 09:19 -0700
    Re: memcpy can't take null. Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-04-07 09:21 -0700
      Re: memcpy can't take null. Guillaume <message@bottle.org> - 2020-04-08 01:41 +0200
        Re: memcpy can't take null. scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2020-04-08 00:30 +0000
          Re: memcpy can't take null. Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> - 2020-04-08 02:06 -0700
            Re: memcpy can't take null. Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2020-04-08 09:17 -0400
              Re: memcpy can't take null. Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2020-04-09 07:16 -0700
            Re: memcpy can't take null. Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-04-08 13:33 -0700
              Re: memcpy can't take null. Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> - 2020-04-09 09:05 -0700
                Re: memcpy can't take null. Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2020-04-09 13:28 -0700
                Re: memcpy can't take null. richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) - 2020-04-09 23:41 +0000
          Re: memcpy can't take null. Guillaume <message@bottle.org> - 2020-04-08 16:17 +0200
    Re: memcpy can't take null. Ike Naar <ike@sdf.lonestar.org> - 2020-04-07 22:01 +0000
      Re: memcpy can't take null. Guillaume <message@bottle.org> - 2020-04-08 01:32 +0200

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