GCC 3.4 optimisation of if (&ptr == NULL)
John Neil
jneil@atrove.com
Thu Dec 4 01:44:00 GMT 2003
I recently spent time upgrading my embedded application form gcc 3.2 to the
current cvs version of gcc 3.4. Whilst doing this I found that gcc 3.4 was
removing the "if (&ptr == NULL) as shown in the following test case
extern void* g_ptr;
int test()
{
if (&g_ptr == 0)
return 1;
else
return 0;
}
Always returns 0 which can be seen in the generated assembler
Generaged with (m68k-rtems-gcc).
NO_APP
.file "test.i"
.text
.align 2
.globl test
.type test, @function
test:
link.w %a6,#0
clr.l %d0
unlk %a6
rts
.size test, .-test
.ident "GCC: (GNU) 3.4 20031125 (experimental)"
Now I would agree normally that the address of a variable cannot be zero,
however in the embedded environment this technique is used to pass
information from the linker file to the C application, as was the case with
my application. In this case the address can indeed be zero. I tried
various different levels of optimization to no avail, so I was wondering if
anybody could shed some light on this change
Cheers
John
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