[DSMan195276]

I'll be honest, I didn't find any of these to be particularly surprising. If you've been using C and are familiar with strict-aliasing and common UB issues I wouldn't expect any of these questions to seriously trip you up. Number 2 is probably the one most people are unlikely to guess, but that example has also been beaten to death so much since it started happening that I think lots of people (Or at least, the people likely to read this) have already seen it before.

I'd also add that there are ways to 'get around' some of these issues if necessary - for example, gcc has a flag for disabling strict-aliasing, and a flag for 2's complement signed-integer wrapping.

[mjevans]

I don't think #2 has been fully beaten to death yet.

Assuming a platform where you don't segfault (say that 'page 0' variables are valid) and thus runtime does proceed; I still can't think of any /valid/ reason to eliminate the if that follows (focus line 2 in the comments).

Under what set of logic does being able to de-reference a pointer confer that it's value is not 0 (which is what the test equates to)?

In my opinion that is an, often working but, incorrect optimization.

[maxlybbert]

C programmers expect dead code removal. Especially when the compiler also inlines functions (and, of course, inlining makes the biggest impact on short functions; and one way to get short functions is to have aggressive dead code removal). And macros can expand into very weird, but valid, code; so the statement that "nobody would ever write code like that" isn't relevant. The compiler may well have to handle unnatural looking code.

As others have stated, compilers generally don't actually have special case code to create unintuitive behavior if it looks like the programmer goofed.

It's possible and desirable for a compiler to remove branches of "if" statements that it knows at compile time won't ever be true. And, of course, one special case of statically known "if" statements are checks for NULL or not-NULL pointers in cases where the compiler knows that a pointer will never be NULL (e.g., it points to the stack) or will always be NULL (e.g., it was initialized to NULL and passed to a function or macro).

So the standard allows the compiler to say "this pointer cannot be NULL at this point because it was already dereferenced." Either the compiler is right because the pointer couldn't be NULL, or dereferencing the pointer already triggered undefined behavior, in which case unexpected behavior is perfectly acceptable. Some programmers will complain because the compiler won't act sensibly in this case, but C doesn't have any sensible option for what the compiler should do when you dereference a NULL pointer (yes, your operating system may give you a SEGFAULT, but the rules are written by a committee that can't guarantee that there will be an operating system).

[mjevans]

OK, I think I see what SHOULD happen here.

It's been forever since I've actually compiled a C program not part of some package I was installing, BUT.

* There should be a warning flag, and it should be ON BY DEFAULT, that //all// code removal is stated, and the logic behind it given.

* It should be possible to elevate that condition to an error (and that too might even be the default).

[maxlybbert]

I have no idea if it's true, but compiler implementers swear that their compilers perform so many optimizations, and that those optimizations allow additional optimizations, that this kind of approach would bury you in messages.

[vyodaiken]

C programmers should be able to expect that "optimizations" will not transform program meaning. And because C is so low level, certain types of optimizations may be more difficult or impossible. If the pointer was explicitly set to NULL, the compiler can justifiably deduce the branch will not be taken but the deduction "if the programmer dereferenced the pointer it must not be NULL" is not based on a sound rule. In fact, the whole concept that the compiler can make any transformation it wants in the presence of UB is wacky. Optimization should always be secondary to correctness.

[msbarnett]

> C programmers should be able to expect that "optimizations" will not transform program meaning.

If x is null, the program in #2 has no meaning. The only way to preserve its meaning is to assume x is not null.

> Optimization should always be secondary to correctness.

If x is null, the program in #2 has no correctness. The only way to salvage its correctness is to assume x is not null.

[vyodaiken]

Exactly. You are assuming that a poorly written standard is correct and engineering practice of working programs is incorrect.

[msbarnett]

Ok, so you want compilers to generate a translation for program #2 that works "correctly" to your mind when x is null.

Please explain to the class the meaning of the construct int y = *x; when x is null, so that all conforming C compilers can be updated to generate code for this case "correctly".

[mattkrause]

> In fact, the whole concept that the compiler can make any transformation it wants in the presence of UB is wacky.

That's the way it's often explained but it's not really what happens--the compiler doesn't scan for undefined behavior and then replace it with random operations. Instead, it's applying a series of transformations that preserve the program's semantics if the program stays "in bounds", avoiding invoking undefined behaviors.

I agree that equating "if the programmer dereferenced the pointer" and "the pointer must not be NULL" betrays a....touching naivety about the quality of a lot of code, but if you start from the premise that the programmer shouldn't be doing that, the results aren't totally insane.

[vyodaiken]

"touching naivete"is a good way of putting it.

[maxlybbert]

> C programmers should be able to expect that "optimizations" will not transform program meaning.

That's the official rule, but it's "program meaning as defined by the standard." It's not perfect, but nobody's come up with a better alternative. We get bugs because programmers expect some meaning that's not in the standard. But compilers are written according to the standard, not according to some folklore about what reasonable or experienced programmers expect.

*

Again, the idea isn't that the compiler found a mistake and will do its best to make you regret it. Derefencing a pointer is a clear statement that the programmer believes the pointer isn't NULL. The standard allows the compiler to believe that statement. Partly because the language doesn't define what to do if the statement is false.

[nwmcsween]

> But compilers are written according to the standard.

Written to the writers _interpretation_ of the standard. I bet money that every compiler written from a text standard hasn't followed said standard. It would be nice if a standard included code fragments used to show/test the validity of what is stated.

[adrianN]

There are examples in the standard.

[vyodaiken]

Actually that's not correct. The standard says the behavior is up to the compiler. The compiler author took that as a license to produce a non truth preserving transformation of the code. The actual current clang behavior also satisfies the standard as written.

[maxlybbert]

> The standard says the behavior is up to the compiler.

I think this statement is correct, but it's the kind of thing people say when they confuse implementation defined behavior and undefined behavior. And that distinction is key.

Implementation defined behavior means the compiler gets to choose what it will do, document the choice, and then stick to it.

Undefined behavior means that the program is invalid, but the compiler isn't expected to notice the error. Whatever the compiler spits out is acceptable by definition. The compiler can generate a program that doesn't follow the rules of C; or that only does something weird when undefined behavior is triggered, but the weird behavior doesn't take place on the same line as the undefined behavior; etc.

It's certainly true that "the compiler isn't expected to notice the error" doesn't prohibit a compiler from noticing the error. A compiler can notice, but it's standard conforming even if it doesn't.

I should probably mention that when I say "the standard" I mean the C language standard; the POSIX standard may add requirements such that something undefined according to the language is well defined on POSIX.

[msbarnett]

> Under what set of logic does being able to de-reference a pointer confer that it's value is not 0 (which is what the test equates to)?

You're conflating null and zero (which C encourages you to do for various terrible reasons). The test does not test that x is not zero; it tests that x is not null (null, like zero, is falsey, but again, null is not to be mistaken for zero), which in C is sometimes represented by the character '0' but which legally can be totally distinct from the bit-pattern zero and which should be thought of as totally distinct. Zero can be a valid address in memory. Null is never a valid address in memory. The integral type with value zero when cast to a pointer is guaranteed to be the null pointer (which may have a different bit pattern than zero!). Casting non-integral types that happen to have the value zero to a pointer is not guaranteed to produce a null pointer. Confused yet?

The compiler isn't. It knows that you're testing that a pointer is not null.

Since x has already been derefrenced, and since derefrencing x has no translatable meaning if x is null, it follows that we can only produce a meaningful translation of this program iff x is not null.

It therefore follows that x must not be null in the test, since x has not changed.

[vyodaiken]

I'm sorry, but that is not what the current standard, no matter its weaknesses, requires. The standard says that dereferencing a null pointer results in undefined behavior. The compiler writer chose to (a) deduce that the pointer dereference was not an oversight and (b) then produce a pointless "optimization" that compounded the error. Compiling the dereference to a move instruction is perfectly compatible with the standard.

[E6300]

> Under what set of logic does being able to de-reference a pointer confer that it's value is not 0 (which is what the test equates to)?

Simple: undefined behavior makes all physically possible behaviors permissible.

In reality though, such an elimination would only be correct if the compiler was able to prove that the function is ever called with NULL, and if the compiler is smart enough to do that, hopefully the compiler writers are not A-holes and will warn instead of playing silly-buggers.

[vyodaiken]

This is a kind of Department of Motor Vehicles Bureaucrat thinking. For example, there as many thousands of lines of C code that reference *0, which is a perfectly good address in some environments. One should be able to depend on compilers following expressed intentions of the programmer and not making silly deductions based on counter-factual assumptions.

[E6300]

> This is a kind of Department of Motor Vehicles Bureaucrat thinking.

Sorry, but modern compilers are basically automatic theorem provers. They'll use whatever means necessary to get every last drop of performance. If you play cowboy with them you'll just get hurt.

> For example, there as many thousands of lines of C code that reference *0, which is a perfectly good address in some environments.

It's permissible for a particular platform to define behaviors that the standard has left undefined. If you try to take that code and run it elsewhere, that's your problem.

[vyodaiken]

If you are going to do theorem proving, you should try to only prove true theorems.

[E6300]

If you want to phrase it like that, a compiler tries to prove conjectures and performs actions (usually code and data elimination) based on whether it can prove them or their negatives. Sometimes it can't do either.

I don't see where you're going, though.

[lmm]

This battle has been fought and lost. If you require sensible behaviour, just move on and use a language that offers it. C compilers will do what makes them look good on benchmarks, and various "friendly C" efforts have been tried and failed.

[vyodaiken]

Au contraire - gcc and clang both appear to do the right thing now.

[mfukar]

https://godbolt.org/g/lqmNLh

[mjevans]

You can't though. It's always possible to re-link the objects.

[E6300]

You can if, for example, the function is static. Also there could be a link-time optimization pass. The linker can see all calls to that function, unless the function is exported.

[DSMan195276]

You're thinking about it in the context of actual computers. The C standard says absolutely nothing about what NULL has to be, besides that the integer value 0 is considered to be the NULL address and that dereferencing it is considered invalid. The NULL address does not have to be all 0 bits. Architectures are generally free to define it to any invalid address they want to be NULL, 0 just happens to be a common and easy one. The catch you're pointing out is that on x86 there are technically no 'invalid' addresses, so we just use 0 and assume you won't ever attempt to use the stuff there (Which in practice on x86, nobody puts anything there).

[sjolsen]

>The catch you're pointing out is that on x86 there are technically no 'invalid' addresses

Depending on what you mean precisely by "x86," there is such a thing as an invalid address: the IA32e architecture (or whatever you want to call Intel's flavour of 64-bit "x86") requires that the <n> high bits of an address match, where <n> is machine-dependent.

[DSMan195276]

That's a fair point - though I think you could debate whether or not the current 48-bit address space of x86-64 is part of the architecture or just an implementation detail. But in the end I don't really think it matters which you consider it (And I'd be happy to consider it to be either). All that said, you're completely right that with current x86-64, there are 64-bit values that could never be a valid address.

[wahern]

  Under what set of logic does being able to de-reference a pointer confer that it's value is not 0 (which is what the test equates to)?

Normal deductive logic?

  * No NULL pointer can be dereferenced. 
  * x is dereferenced.
  * Therefore, x is not a NULL pointer.

Of course, the compiler is presuming that your code is correct. That's a reasonable presumption when dealing with computer programming languages. Programming languages would be rather hard to interpret and translate--not to mention impossible to optimize--if you couldn't apply basic deductive logic to their statements.

Imagine the routine had this code, instead:

  void foo (int *x) {
    if (*x != *x) {
    {
      return;
    }
    bar();
    return;
  }

wouldn't you expect the compiler to apply the same optimizations? Or would you be upset that eliding the check broke some code that depended on a race condition somewhere else in your program?

Also, pointing out that the "value is not 0 (which is what the test equates to)" is a non-sequitur. During compilation the literal 0 can behave as a NULL pointer constant. But the machine representation of a NULL pointer does not need to be all-bits 0, and such machine still exist today. And usually, as in this case, the distinction is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that the 0th page is mappable on your hardware. What matters is that the C specification says that a NULL pointer cannot be dereferenced; that dereferencing a NULL pointer is non-sense code.

There's an argument that compilers should be careful about the optimizations they make. Not all programs are correct, and taking that presumption too far can be detrimental. But it's not always trivial to implement an optimizing compiler to "do what I say, not what I mean". Optimizations depend on the soundness of being able to apply deductive logic to a program--that is, being able to string together a series of simple predicates to reach a conclusion about program behavior. You often have to add _more_ complexity to a compiler to _not_ optimize certain syntactic constructs. Recognizing the larger construct, especially only the subset that are pathological, without optimizing the ones everybody expects to actually be optimized, can be more difficult than simply applying a series of very basic deductive rules. So it's no wonder that most compiler implementations, especially high-performance compilers, tend to push back on this front.

What would be nice is for compilers to attempt to generate diagnostics when they elide code like that. An optimizer needs to be 100% correct all the time, every time. A diagnostic can be wrong some amount of time, which means it's easier to implement and the implementation of a particular check doesn't ripple through the entire code base.

GCC and clang implement many good diagnostics. But with -Wall -Wextra they also tend to generate alot of noise. Nothing is more annoying than GCC or clang complaining about perfectly compliant code for which there's no chance of it hiding a bug. For example, I used to often wrote initializer macros like:

  #define OPTIONS_INIT(...) { .foo = 1, .bar = 3, __VA_ARGS__ }
  struct options {
    int foo;
    int bar;
  };

allowing applications to have code like:

  struct options opts = OPTIONS_INIT(.bar = 0);

But with -Wall GCC and clang will complain about the second .bar definition overriding the first. (Because the macro expands to { .foo = 1, .bar = 3, .bar = 0 }). The C specification guarantees in no unambiguous terms that the last definition of .bar wins. And presumably they guarantee that precisely to make writing such macros feasible. I've never once had a problem with unintentionally redefine a struct field in an initializer list. Yet GCC and clang are adamant about complaining. It's so annoying especially because 1) there's absolutely nothing wrong with the code and 2) disabling the warning requires a different flag for clang than for GCC.

(I realize that for such option types you usually want define the semantics so that the default, most common value is 0. But it's not always desirable, and certainly not always practical, to be able to stick that mode. And that's just one example of that construct.)

[raarts]

* No NULL pointer can be dereferenced.

NULL pointers CAN be dereferenced, it all depends on the environment you run on.

[gpderetta]

In standard C NULL pointers cannot be dereferenced. Full stop, there is nothing to argue about it.

There are environments that either lack memory protection and do not allow invalid pointer derereferences to be caught, which means that you can't rely on the MMU to catch mistakes. In this case either deal with silent errors or get a compiler that is able (at a cost) to sanitize any pointer access.

There are other systems in which memory address 0 is a perfectly valid address. The ABI of these systems should pick a different bit pattern for NULL pointers, but often don't so compilers sometime offer as a conforming extension extension the option to allow null pointers to be treated as valid (in effect not having null pointers at all).

[mjevans]

There are indeed such systems.

Embedded systems (which are frequently programmed in assembly or 'C' code).

Such systems very often map a small bit of high-speed (on chip) RAM to the first few bytes of address space. I very distinctly recall such an embedded system in a college course.

[kelnos]

Yeah, I agree. I used to write C full time, but haven't in around 6 years, and I only flubbed #11 & #12 (I knew there was undefined behavior but couldn't remember why; after reading the answers I was like "duh", esp for #12 after having read #11).

I've never actually run into #2 in practice, though: even at -O3 the dereference in line 1 has always crashed for me, though I guess probably because I've never written code for an OS where an address of 0 is valid and doesn't cause a SIGSEGV or similar.

What's the best way to "fix" strict aliasing without disabling the undefined behavior around it? Using a union?

[DSMan195276]

I think the catch with #2 is that we probably run into it more in the opposite way - a unnecessary NULL check put in from, say, inlining a function or expanding a macro is removed. On that note though, even in OS code address 0 is usually setup to cause some type of fault to catch errors. I think the issue happens when the compiler removes or moves the deference somewhere else - though obviously the cases where this is legal are limited. But in the posted code, for example, the `y` variable is unused and thus could be removed entirely, which would also remove the NULL dereference (but still remove the NULL check).

> What's the best way to "fix" strict aliasing without disabling the undefined behavior around it? Using a union?

I was just talking about `-fno-strict-aliasing`, which is a flag for `gcc` (And `clang` I assume), but it does remove all UB like you're saying by simply allowing all pointers to alias.

The other options are unions like you're thinking (Though that's also technically UB, since writing to one union member and reading from another is undefined, though most compilers allow it without incident), or extensions like `gcc`s `may_alias` attribute. The `may_alias` is really the cleanest way to do it, but for something like OS code the aliasing happens in such strange places that just disabling strict-aliasing completely tends to be the way to go.

[E6300]

> What's the best way to "fix" strict aliasing without disabling the undefined behavior around it? Using a union?

I had this discussion with another C++ programmer and we came to the conclusion that, if you care to avoid that particular UB, any time you cast pointers between unrelated or basic types and you're going to write to one pointer and read from the other, you need to go through a union, as annoying as it is.

[wahern]

Not just a union, but the union definition needs to be in scope _and_ used such so that the compiler can see the possibility of the relationship between the two objects.

But a union doesn't magically make type-punning correct. This code is not correct:

  union {
    int d;
    long long lld;
  } u;

  u.d = 1;
  printf("%lld\n", u.lld);
  u.lld = 0;
  printf("%lld\n", u.lld);

The union ensures that the compiler doesn't move "u.lld = 0" above the first print statement, but usually writing from one type and reading from another is undefined behavior no matter how you accomplish it. That's because the representations can be different, and one or the other might have invalid representations. The biggest exception is reading through a char pointer; reading representation bits through a char pointer is guaranteed to always be okay.

Aliasing and type punning are two different issues that are only tangentially related in terms of language semantics. But the issues do often coincide, especially in poorly written code.

You can also put the compiler on notice not to apply the strict aliasing rule by using simple type coercion (implicit or explicit) in the relevant statements. What matters is that we put the compiler on notice that two objects of [seemingly] different types are related and thus have an ordering relationship, and the standard provides a few ways to do that.

For example, this code is wrong:

  struct foo {
    int i;
  };

  struct bar {
    int i;
  };

  void baz(struct foo *foo, struct bar *bar) {
    foo->i = 0;
    bar->i++:
  }

  struct foo foo;
  baz(&foo, (struct bar *)&foo);

whereas all of

  void baz(struct foo *foo, struct bar *bar) {
    foo->i = 0;
    (((struct foo *)bar)->i)++;
  }

and

  void baz(struct foo *foo, struct bar *bar) {
    union {
      struct foo foo;
      struct bar bar;
    } *foo_u = (void *)foo, *bar_u = (void *)bar;    
    foo_u->foo.i = 0;
    bar_u->bar.i++;
  }

and

  void baz(struct foo *foo, struct bar *bar) {
      *(int *)foo = 0;
      (*(int *)bar)++;
  }

are correct. This should be correct, too, I think

  void baz(struct foo *foo, struct bar *bar) {
      *(int *)&foo->i = 0;
      (*(int *)&bar->i)++;
  }

and is also a weird case where the superfluous cast is necessary.

The purpose in all 4 cases is to make it evident viz-a-viz C's typing system that two objects might alias each other, and they do that by using constructs that put those objects into the same universe of alias-able types.

The conspicuous description of the union method in the C standard is more directed, I think, at compiler writers. It's not the only way to alias correctly (explicit casting to the basic type is enough), but often times it's the most natural when dealing with polymorphic compound objects.

Compiler writers historically didn't always implement enough smarts in their compiler to be able to detect possible aliasing through unions, and that needed to be addressed by a more thorough specification of union behavior. That is, the standard needed to make it clear that a compiler was required grok the relationship of two sub-objects (of the same basic type) that were derived from the same root union type.

Explicitly type-casting through a union just for aliasing is a little stilted, though, when you can achieve the same thing using a cast through a basic type. The union method is preferable, but only in so far as it's used to _avoid_ or to _minimize_ type coercion. And it'll never solve type punning issues.

[E6300]

> The union ensures that the compiler doesn't move "u.lld = 0" above the first print statement, but usually writing from one type and reading from another is undefined behavior no matter how you accomplish it.

I know, but the only reason aliasing becomes an issue is because someone is trying to cast between unrelated pointer types to perform cheap type conversions. Yes, even with the union the behavior is undefined, but if you know the platform you're targeting the program may be well-behaved.

As for your snippets, yes, casting pointers across function boundaries will work. The problem is when you don't want to introduce a call, which is where unions come in.

[the_cap_theorem]

Yes, like most of the "undefined behaviour allows your computer to format the disk"-style posts this one seems to be written by a programmer with novice-intermediate C knowledge.

What irks me is the intro >> The purpose of this article is to make everyone (especially C programmers) say: “I do not know C”. <<

I think the purpose of the article was mainly for the author to write down some things he learned. Apparently it was his expectation that readers wouldn't be able to answer the quiz.

However, if you can't answer (at least most) of these questions correctly you're _not_ an expert c programmer.

So I think the correct intro here should be "The purpose of this blog post is to to show that if you want to learn C, you actually have to learn it and should not attempt to 'wing it'".

...and maybe also that you should not write patronizing blog posts about a topic which you haven't fully grasped yet yourself.

[rwj]

Not a full-time C programmer, and I was still correct on all of them except #1. Certainly C is more dangerous than other languages, but I don't understand the push to convince people that it is impossible to understand.

[deathanatos]

I don't think most C programmers share your depth of the language. I tried hard to explain strict aliasing once, and utterly failed. The dev was convinced that he knew the exact behavior of the platform, and that it was fine. Yet people constantly find examples where we "know" what the compiler will do, and it does something completely different.

[DSMan195276]

I would agree that strict-aliasing is a hurt point for a lot of C devs, which is unfortunate. I'd only suggest that in general, if the strict-aliasing rule is coming into play you're probably already doing some really shady to begin with. Like in this example, casting a `long ` to an `int ` is likely a bad way to go about things even without worrying about strict-aliasing. In a lot of ways, I'd say that problems with the strict-aliasing rule are a symptom of a larger problem. If you can convince them that what they're doing is just bad coding practice to begin with, you might have a better time making them write correct code in the long run.

Now if you're working more directly with hardware (Which is of course possible/likely with C) then it might just be easier to disable strict-aliasing all together if you can, since identifying all the spots where it might be a problem tends to be an issue.

[caf]

In the really simple cases (like accessing a float as a long, or similar), you're right.

The problem is the interpretation that's been applied to aggregate types:

  struct a {
    int variant;
  };

  struct b {
    int variant;
    long  data;
  };

I have a pointer to a struct b - can I cast it to a pointer to struct a and still dereference 'variant'? It has the correct type and is guaranteed to live at the start of the struct in both cases. The prevailing opinion seems to be "no" (see https://trust-in-soft.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/vmcai.p... eg. example st1).

The BSD socket API was built on exactly this kind of type punning.

[DSMan195276]

> I have a pointer to a struct b - can I cast it to a pointer to struct a and still dereference 'variant'?

I think it is a bit of a gray area, but personally I've always held the opinion/understanding of no, that is invalid. The C standard does make one point fairly clear on strict-aliasing, which is the idea that strict-aliasing revolves on the idea that an object can only be considered to be one type of data (Or a `char` array, the only exception). Your example would be invalid for the reason that you can't treat an object of `struct b` as though it is a `struct a` - the fact that they share the same preamble doesn't change that. To be clear with what I'm saying: `struct b` can alias an `int`. `struct a` can also alias an `int`. But `struct b` can't alias a `struct a`, and because of this an int accessed through a `struct a` can't be accessed through a `struct b`.

That said, in general I find this to usually be a fixable problem, which also has (IMO) a cleaner implementation:

    struct head {
        int variant;
    };

    struct a {
        struct head h;
    };

    struct b {
        struct head h;
        long data;
    };

Now you can take a pointer to a `struct b` object and treat it like a pointer to a `struct head` object (Because it is a `struct head` object). You could do the same thing with objects of type `struct a`. So now you can cast both of them to `struct head` and examine the `variant` of both. Then later you could cast it back to the proper type.

This approach to aggregate types is heavily used in the Linux Kernel and other places (Including most of my own code). The `container_of` macro makes it even nicer to use (Though the legality of the `container_of` macro is an interesting debate...).

> The BSD socket API was built on exactly this kind of type punning.

Kinda. It's actually surprising how close it comes to skirting this issue (And it does skirt it), but I believe it's actually possible to use BSD sockets without ever violating the strict-aliasing rule (Though of course, there are ways of using it which would arguably violate the rule). In most cases for BSD sockets, strict-aliasing is more likely going to be broken in the kernel, not your code.

To note though, the strict-aliasing rule only applies to dereferencing pointers. You can cast pointers back and forth all day, you just have to ensure that when you're done you're treating it the object as you originally declared it. Thus, if you pass a `struct sockaddr_in` to `bind` and cast it to a `struct sockaddr`, the strict-aliasing rule isn't violated because you never dereferenced the casted pointer.

Going along with that, as long as you correctly declare your `struct sockaddr`s from the beginning you won't have any strict-aliasing woes. The only situation where this could technically be a problem is `accept` and `recvfrom`, since they are the only functions that gives a `struct sockaddr` back. But assuming you already know what address-family the socket is using, you can declare the correct `struct sockaddr` for that family from the start, cast it and pass it to `accept` or `recvfrom`, and then use it as your originally declared type without breaking strict-aliasing.

Of course, it's also worth keeping in mind that the BSD sockets interface came before C89. You definitely wouldn't design it the same way if you were to do it today.

[caf]

Kinda. It's actually surprising how close it comes to skirting this issue (And it does skirt it), but I believe it's actually possible to use BSD sockets without ever violating the strict-aliasing rule (Though of course, there are ways of using it which would arguably violate the rule). In most cases for BSD sockets, strict-aliasing is more likely going to be broken in the kernel, not your code.

Well, firstly it's pretty unsatisfying to hear that yes, this API contravenes strict aliasing restrictions, but only on the library side! - essentially that it is impossible to implement the sockets C API in C.

That aside, this still excludes long-standing examples like embedding a pointer to struct sockaddr in your client struct, which points to either a sockaddr_in, sockaddr_in6 or sockaddr_un depending on where that client connected from (well, you can still do it, but now you can't examine the sockaddr's sa_family member to see what type the address really is - you need to have a redundant, duplicate copy of that field in the client struct itself).

The situation is similar with sockaddr_storage. The whole point of that type is to allow you to stash either AF_INET or AF_INET6 addresses in the same object and then examine the ss_family field to see what it really is - the text in POSIX says:

  The <sys/socket.h> header shall define the sockaddr_storage structure, which shall be:

    Large enough to accommodate all supported protocol-specific address structures

    Aligned at an appropriate boundary so that pointers to it can be cast as pointers to protocol-specific address structures and used to access the fields of those structures without alignment problems

( http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/sys... )

Of course, it's also worth keeping in mind that the BSD sockets interface came before C89. You definitely wouldn't design it the same way if you were to do it today.

Well, the aforementioned sockaddr_storage came about after C89.

And wasn't C89 supposed to be about codifying existing practice, anyway?

[DSMan195276]

> Well, firstly it's pretty unsatisfying to hear that yes, this API contravenes strict aliasing restrictions, but only on the library side! - essentially that it is impossible to implement the sockets C API in C.

Then it'd also be pretty unsatisfying to hear that it's impossible to write an OS kernel in standard C too - it requires compiler extensions for lots of various details. It's impossible to write a standard C library in nothing but standard C as well. I would absolutely agree, however, that the fact that you have to use an extension to get past strict-aliasing is unfortunate (It'd be nice if in a future C they add something like the `may_alias` extension into the standard). But you can do it, and OS code is definitely one where extensions are going to be rampant anyway. For example, the Linux Kernel disables strict-aliasing completely.

> That aside, this still excludes long-standing examples like embedding a pointer to struct sockaddr in your client struct, which points to either a sockaddr_in, sockaddr_in6 or sockaddr_un depending on where that client connected from (well, you can still do it, but now you can't examine the sockaddr's sa_family member to see what type the address really is - you need to have a redundant, duplicate copy of that field in the client struct itself).

Strictly speaking, that's not true. You can examine it directly, but it requires casting the `struct sockaddr * ` to a `sa_family_t * ` instead. This is valid because regardless of what type of object it really is, it must start with a `sa_family_t` entry, so you are treating it as the correct type (And by that notion, `sa_family_t` is allowed to alias any of the `struct sockaddr` types). Besides that, you could also use a `union` to combine all the possible `sockaddr`s that you're going to handle together with a `sockaddr_storage`. Then you can do things like normal and simply access the `sockaddr` through the correct union member.

> Well, the aforementioned sockaddr_storage came about after C89.

That it did. However, that was more about making the current API work with larger addresses (namely ipv6) not to fix the API. There really wasn't any other way to do it.

> And wasn't C89 supposed to be about codifying existing practice, anyway?

Some compilers implemented the strict-aliasing optimization (And did lots of other strange things), some did not. The C standards committee chose to go with strict-aliasing since it provides a lot of optimization opportunities.

All that said, I'm not saying things are perfect by any means, as our conversation here shows. I don't think things are nearly as bad as people tend to think, however. Generally speaking, unless you're doing something a little bit shady it's possible to avoid any strict-aliasing issues, and if it's really not possible there's generally a way to simply "turn it off", albeit that may result in a little less portable code - though if you're breaking strict-aliasing the portability of your code is already a bit suspect to begin with.

[TorKlingberg]

A common class assignment or interview question is to write your own memcpy. Towards the end you usually start optimizing it by copying multiple bytes at once. That is undefined behavior. You cannot just cast a pointer to uint32_t* and start using it, unless the underlying object is actually uint32_t. In practice it works fine, so people don't care. We'll see what future compilers will do, especially when the homemade memcpy is inlined somewhere.

An other one is custom malloc backed by a static char array. You're allowed to access any object as char*, but not the other way around. A static char array is always a char array, and accessing it through a pointer to anything else is a strict aliasing violation. Only the built-in malloc and siblings can create untyped memory.

[rwj]

You can cast from char* to uint32_t* and start using it. I forget the exact standardese, but there is an execption for char*.

[TorKlingberg]

There is an exception for accessing any object through a character type pointer, but not the other way around. uint32_t is not a character type, and it doesn't matter if it was casted to a char* first.

Also, apparently uint8_t may not be a character type.

[DSMan195276]

> Also, apparently uint8_t may not be a character type.

I think that goes hand-in-hand with the fact that `char` is not guaranteed to be 8-bits wide in C, so by that fact `uint8_t` may not be a `char`. In practice I highly doubt this distinction really matters: Platforms without an 8-bit `char` are basically guaranteed to not support (a standards compliant) `uint8_t` anyway, and it is reasonable to target 8-bit `char` systems in which case it's safe to assume `uint8_t` and `char` are the same thing. (Well, `unsigned char`)

[yorwba]

Only if the pointer is correctly aligned for the uint32_t data type. Otherwise you might get problems with unaligned memory acesses. (Like when you get some data over the wire that is clearly just a memory dump of a C struct, so you just do a pointer cast. Boom, unaligned read.)