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Date:   Fri, 2 Nov 2018 06:37:28 -0700
From:   "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.ibm.com>
To:     David Laight <David.Laight@ACULAB.COM>
Cc:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
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Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] lib: Introduce generic __cmpxchg_u64() and use it
 where needed
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On Fri, Nov 02, 2018 at 10:56:31AM +0000, David Laight wrote:
> From: Paul E. McKenney
> > Sent: 01 November 2018 17:02
> ...
> > And there is a push to define C++ signed arithmetic as 2s complement,
> > but there are still 1s complement systems with C compilers.  Just not
> > C++ compilers.  Legacy...
> 
> Hmmm... I've used C compilers for DSPs where signed integer arithmetic
> used the 'data registers' and would saturate, unsigned used the 'address
> registers' and wrapped.
> That was deliberate because it is much better to clip analogue values.

There are no C++ compilers for those DSPs, correct?  (Some of the
C++ standards commmittee members believe that they have fully checked,
but they might well have missed something.)

> Then there was the annoying cobol run time that didn't update the
> result variable if the result wouldn't fit.
> Took a while to notice that the sum of a list of values was even wrong!
> That would be perfectly valid for C - if unexpected.

Heh!  COBOL and FORTRAN also helped fund my first pass through university.

> > > But for us using -fno-strict-overflow which actually defines signed
> > > overflow
> 
> I wonder how much real code 'strict-overflow' gets rid of?
> IIRC gcc silently turns loops like:
> 	int i; for (i = 1; i != 0; i *= 2) ...
> into infinite ones.
> Which is never what is required.

The usual response is something like this:

	for (i = 1; i < n; i++)

where the compiler has no idea what range of values "n" might take on.
Can't say that I am convinced by that example, but at least we do have
-fno-strict-overflow.

							Thanx, Paul