const: clarify and typo

[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 4a9406fac3ad37d9089a48f5469274667dd9c09e..05690b3a6e3fb88860c4adb39025f7b605b30cde 100644 (file)
--- a/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
+++ b/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ I hope that by the end of this post, you will agree with me on both of these sta
 ## Pointers Are Complicated
 
 What is the problem with "pointers are just integers"?  Let us consider the following example:<br>
-(I am using C++ code here mostly because writing unsafe code is easier in C++, and unsafe code is where these problems really show up.)
+(I am using C++ code here mostly because writing unsafe code is easier in C++, and unsafe code is where these problems really show up. C has all the same issues, as does unsafe Rust.)
 {% highlight c++ %}
 int test() {
     auto x = new int[8];
@@ -137,8 +137,9 @@ 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.
 
-This is the most lazy thing to do, and we do it because it is not clear what else to do -- 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.
-Every allocation is just identified by a (unobservable) ID.
+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.
+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.
 If you are interested, I suggest you read [this paper](http://www.cis.upenn.edu/%7Estevez/papers/KHM+15.pdf) that explores the above idea of adding a base address.
@@ -227,6 +228,7 @@ Using `Uninit` instead of an arbitrary bit pattern means miri can, in a single e
 ## Conclusion
 
 We have seen that in languages like C++ and Rust (unlike on real hardware), pointers can be different even when they point to the same address, and that a byte is more than just a number in `0..256`.
+This is also why calling C "portable assembly" may have been appropriate in 1978, but is a dangerously misleading statement nowadays.
 With this, I think we are ready to look at a first draft of my "2018 memory model" (working title ;) -- in the next post. :)
 
 Thanks to @rkruppe and @nagisa for help in finding arguments for why `Uninit` is needed.