clarify that what miri does not not a reasonable choice for language semantics

[web.git] / ralf / _posts / 2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md

diff --git a/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md b/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
index dfd6bd1cfc1186d61cd74074ac9f84e6a5f47e08..64ea94b18b909a7a900358e5bd4d57d1b9eb1ac1 100644 (file)
--- a/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
+++ b/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
@@ -137,8 +137,10 @@ However, this simple model starts to fall apart once you consider pointer-intege
 In miri, casting a pointer to an integer does not actually do anything, we now just have an integer variable (i.e., its *type* says it is an integer) whose *value* is a pointer (i.e., an allocation-offset pair).
 However, multiplying that "integer" by 2 leads to an error, because it is entirely unclear what it means to multiply such an abstract pointer by 2.
 
 In miri, casting a pointer to an integer does not actually do anything, we now just have an integer variable (i.e., its *type* says it is an integer) whose *value* is a pointer (i.e., an allocation-offset pair).
 However, multiplying that "integer" by 2 leads to an error, because it is entirely unclear what it means to multiply such an abstract pointer by 2.
 

-This is the most lazy thing to do, and we do it because it is not clear what else to do (other than not supporting these casts at all -- but this way, miri can run more programs).
-In our abstract machine, there is no single coherent "address space" that all allocations live in, that we could use to map every pointer to a distinct integer.
+I should clarify that this is *not* a good solution when defining language semantics.
+It works fine for an interpreter though.
+It is the most lazy thing to do, and we do it because it is not clear what else to do (other than not supporting these casts at all -- but this way, miri can run more programs):
+In our abstract machine, there just is no single coherent "address space" that all allocations live in, that we could use to map every pointer to a distinct integer.

 Every allocation is just identified by an (unobservable) ID.
 We could now start to enrich this model with extra data like a base address for each allocation, and somehow use that when casting an integer back to a pointer... but that's where it gets really complicated, and anyway discussing such a model is not the point of this post.
 The point it to discuss the *need* for such a model.
 Every allocation is just identified by an (unobservable) ID.
 We could now start to enrich this model with extra data like a base address for each allocation, and somehow use that when casting an integer back to a pointer... but that's where it gets really complicated, and anyway discussing such a model is not the point of this post.
 The point it to discuss the *need* for such a model.


@@ -162,7 +164,8 @@ We have to say what the value of `v` is, so we have to find some way to answer t
 (And this is an entirely separate issue from the problem with multiplication that came up in the last section. We just assume some abstract type `Pointer`.)
 
 We cannot represent a byte of a pointer as an element of `0..256`.
 (And this is an entirely separate issue from the problem with multiplication that came up in the last section. We just assume some abstract type `Pointer`.)
 
 We cannot represent a byte of a pointer as an element of `0..256`.

-Instead, we will remember both the pointer, and which byte of the pointer we got.
+Essentially, if we use a naive model of memory, the extra "hidden" part of a pointer (the one that makes it more than just an integer) would be lost whne a pointer is stored to memory and loaded again.
+We have to fix this, so we have to extend our notion of a "byte" to accomodate that extra state.

 So, a byte is now *either* an element of `0..256` ("raw bits"), *or* the n-th byte of some abstract pointer.
 If we were to implement our memory model in Rust, this might look as follows:
 {% highlight rust %}
 So, a byte is now *either* an element of `0..256` ("raw bits"), *or* the n-th byte of some abstract pointer.
 If we were to implement our memory model in Rust, this might look as follows:
 {% highlight rust %}