Re: Bug on PPC (no patch yet)

[Joe Buck <jbuck at synopsys dot com>]

>   In message <Pine.LNX.3.95.971015232715.7124A-100000@helix.cs.cuc.edu>you write:
>   > compile/961203-1.c
>   > 
>   > It gets into an infinite recursion between extract_fixed_bit_field()  and
>   > extract_split_bit_field().
> Known problem.

It fails because the offset as measured in bits exceeds 32 bits, and bad
things happen.

My reaction to that particular bug is "who cares?"  Why not just mark it
as XFAIL on 32-bit platforms, if we don't intend to fix it?  It's not like
the users are likely to hit on this case by accident (create a struct
of at least 2^29 bytes that has a bitfield at the end).  The only reason
this is even in there is that someone with knowledge of gcc internals who
is also a language lawyer tossed it in.  I don't believe such code ever
appeared in a real program.  If folks really *are* worried about it
appearing in a real program, possibly we could attempt to produce a
"sorry, not implemented: bit offset too large" message rather than an
infinite recursion.