From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:31:26 EST."
	<12706eb9d1aafea3af76c427a31aae1a@coraid.com>
References: <1ebc06ba0079a91546444a93ab21bc65@quintile.net>
	<12706eb9d1aafea3af76c427a31aae1a@coraid.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:34:58 -0800
From: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
Message-Id: <20131127203458.7E631B82A@mail.bitblocks.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] compiler bug?
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8c6bc160-ead8-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

On Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:31:26 EST erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com> wrote:
> On Wed Nov 27 11:04:46 EST 2013, steve@quintile.net wrote:
>
> > Whilst porting some code from the net I came across
> > the attached, rather obscure, code.
> >
> > run as:
> >
> > 	larch% 8c -D 'STATIC=static' t.c && 8l t.8 && 8.out
> > 	78780000
> > 	larch% 8c -D 'STATIC=' t.c && 8l t.8 && 8.out
> > 	0
> >
> > I think it is tickling a bug in 8c, though
> > I may be just showing my lack of knowledge of
> > the C standard...
> >
> > anyone any thoughts?
>
> this code is not correct.  it breaks the anti-aliasing rules.  the
> compiler is allowed to assume that tmp is not modified.
> recently had trouble with floating point in stdio for the same
> reasons.

I think this is a compiler bug.  What happens when you
declare a union but still do, for example,

	(((uchar*)&tmp.i)[0] = ((uchar*)mem)[3]

etc.? I bet it works.

> to work around this, use a union, or better yet getle(buf, 3)
> (or be as the case may be),
>
> since there's not enough context to sort out if the original is
> supposed to be big or little endian, here's a union version:
>
> - erik
> ------
> #include <u.h>
> #include <libc.h>
>
> static uint
> getdword_n(void *vmem, int n)
> {
> 	uchar *mem;
> 	union {
> 		uint	i;
> 		uchar	u[sizeof(uint)];
> 	} tmp;
>
> 	mem = vmem;
> 	tmp.i = 0;
> 	switch (n){
> 	case 3:
> 		tmp.u[1] = mem[2];
> 	case 2:
> 		tmp.u[2] = mem[1];
> 	case 1:
> 		tmp.u[3] = mem[0];
> 	}
> 	return tmp.i;
> }
>
> void
> main(void)
> {
> 	uint x;
>
> 	char buf[] = "xxxx";
>
> 	x = getdword_n(buf, 2);
> 	print("%x\n", x);
> }
>