attribute nonnull/expect_nonnull for return value?

[Marc Glisse]

On Sun, 25 Mar 2012, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> Daniel Frey <d.frey@gmx.de> writes:
>
>> GCC now knows that the arguments are nonnull, but how to I tell the
>> compiler that the returned pointer is nonnull? Or if null is allowed
>> but only the exception to the rule, I would like to tell the compiler
>> that is should *expect* the pointer to be nonnull, but not disallow
>> null. Actually, the second case is more important to me, but I think
>> both should be possible.
>
> At present, as far as I know, there is no way to do either.

To completely disallow null return values, you could write an inline 
wrapper that forwards its arguments to the real function and dereferences 
the return pointer before returning it. IIRC, gcc gets the message that a 
pointer that is dereferenced earlier can be assumed to be nonnull.

For a simple expectation, I can't think of a good way, although I believe 
that in the absence of contrary information, the compiler considers 
nonnull pointers more likely than null, for branch prediction and stuff 
(but maybe not as strongly as if you had a __builtin_expect).

-- 
Marc Glisse