From: Ralf Jung <post@ralfj.de>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2020 07:48:26 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: pointers are complicated: clarify that this post is not about exploring the trade-off
X-Git-Url: https://git.ralfj.de/web.git/commitdiff_plain/a0b7abb0f72566b3edd41a1f16d34bf9835d8613

pointers are complicated: clarify that this post is not about exploring the trade-off
---

diff --git a/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md b/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
index 68a2cb0..f3c9133 100644
--- a/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
+++ b/ralf/_posts/2018-07-24-pointers-and-bytes.md
@@ -32,13 +32,18 @@ int test() {
 }
 {% endhighlight %}
 It would be beneficial to be able to optimize the final read of `y[0]` to just return `42`.
+C++ compilers regularly perform such optimizations as they are crucial for generating high-quality assembly.[^perf]
 The justification for this optimization is that writing to `x_ptr`, which points into `x`, cannot change `y`.
 
+[^perf]: To be fair, the are *claimed* to be crucial for generating high-quality assembly. The claim sounds plausible to me, but unfortunately, I do not know of a systematic study exploring the performance benefits of undefined behavior such as this.
+
 However, given how low-level a language C++ is, we can actually break this assumption by setting `i` to `y-x`.
 Since `&x[i]` is the same as `x+i`, this means we are actually writing `23` to `&y[0]`.
 
 Of course, that does not stop C++ compilers from doing these optimizations.
-To allow this, the standard declares our code to have [undefined behavior]({% post_url 2017-07-14-undefined-behavior %}).
+To allow this, the standard declares our code to have [undefined behavior]({% post_url 2017-07-14-undefined-behavior %}).[^0]
+
+[^0]: An argument could be made that compilers should just not do such optimizations to make the programming model simpler. This is a discussion worth having, but the point of this post is not to explore this trade-off, it is to explore the consequences of the choices made in C++.
 
 First of all, it is not allowed to perform pointer arithmetic (like `&x[i]` does) that goes [beyond either end of the array it started in](https://timsong-cpp.github.io/cppwp/n4140/expr.add#5).
 Our program violates this rule: `x[i]` is outside of `x`, so this is undefined behavior.