https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4210
--- Comment #32 from Niels Möller <nisse at lysator dot liu.se> ---
I've checked out the gcc sources, to see if I can understand how to move the
warning around. The example input I'm looking at now is
unsigned
shift_dead (unsigned x)
{
if (0)
return x >> 32;
else
return x >> 1;
}
unsigned
shift_invalid (unsigned x)
{
return x >> 32;
}
where I'd like gcc -Wall to warn for the second function, but not from the
first (currently, it warns for both). The warning is emitted from
build_binary_op, in gcc/c/c-typeck.c, close to line 11880. Deleting it there
silences the warning for *both* functions above.
I have a few questions. Keep in mind that I only have a very vague
understanding of the different phases in gcc, so any guidance is appreciated.
1. There's similar code in c_fully_fold_internal, in gcc/c/c-fold.c, close to
line 400. But that code does *not* emit any warning for the example above,
which surprised me a bit. Maybe that's only for the case that both operands to
the shift operator are constants?
2. More importantly, if the warning is deleted from build_binary_op, we need to
add a check for this case, and an appropriate warning, somewhere later in the
compilation process. It has to be done after dead code is identified, i.e., in
a phase processing only non-dead code. And preferably as early as possibly,
when we're still working close to the parse-tree representation. Is there such
a place? Some other functions traversing the tree are c_gimplify_expr
(gcc/c-family/c-gimplify.c) and verify_tree (gcc/c-family/c-common.c), are any
of those called after elimination of dead code?
3. Alternatively, if there's no place after dead code elimination where the
parse tree is still easily available, a different alternative could be to leave
the check for invalid shift counts in c-typeck.c, but instead of emitting a
warning, construct a special tree object representing an expression with
invalid/undefined behavior, and any meta data needed to emit a warning or error
to describe it? Then emission of the warning could be postponed to later, say,
close to the conversion to SSA form?
4. I also wonder what happens if, for some reason, a constant invalid shift
count is passed through all the way to code generation? Most architectures
would represent a constant shift count for a 32-bit value as 5-bit field in the
opcode, and then the invalid shift counts aren't representable at all. Will gcc
silently ignore higher bits, or is it an internal compiler error, or would it
make sense to produce a friendly warning at this late stage of the compilation?
