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> Making it UB in ISO C ensures that no portable program can rely on a specific behavior This is true. > and this is what makes it possible to find bugs this
by gavinhoward 2y ago
> Making it UB in ISO C ensures that no portable program can rely on a specific behavior
This is true.
> and this is what makes it possible to find bugs this way
No, this is not true. In fact, it is the opposite of true.
If a program cannot rely on behavior, it cannot rely on having the behavior that causes the bug to be visible.
- uecker 2y agoIt does not need to be able to rely on having the behavior that causes the bug to be visible. We just need tools that make the bug visible, e.g. the undefined behavior sanitizers. Those tools work extremely well for signed overflow, but not for unsigned, exactly because unsigned wraparound is defined and for this reason many programs use it. So you can not distinguish between intended wraparound and incorrect wraparound. For this reason, signed overflow is essentially a solved problem, while unsigned wraparound will be the source for many interesting bugs - exactly because it is not UB!
- gavinhoward 2y ago> We just need tools that make the bug visible, e.g. the undefined behavior sanitizers. Does the compiler faithfully compile the source code with sanitizers? Of course not, so we still cannot rely on them. > So you can not distinguish between intended wraparound and incorrect wraparound. This is exactly why I implemented both types in my arithmetic. The one I used is the one I intended.
- uecker 2y agoA compiler which compiles with a sanitizer can be perfectly conforming, i.e. faithfully compile a program.
- gavinhoward 2y agoThat is not what I mean. I mean that the compiler follows the programmer's intent.
- uecker 2y agoHow would a compiler know the programmer's intent?