https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=110743
Bug ID: 110743 Summary: Unexpected -ftrivial-auto-var-init=pattern behavior with partial bitfields Product: gcc Version: 13.1.0 Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P3 Component: c Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org Reporter: arnd at linaro dot org Target Milestone: --- A warning showed up in Linux kernel builds with code that has a data structure with sub-byte holes in it, making it appear as though the structure was uninitialized even though there is no user before the intialization: struct spi_mem_op { struct { int a : 1; }; struct { char b : 1; long c; }; }; void spi_nor_read_any_reg(struct spi_mem_op *); void s25fs256t_post_bfpt_fixup_nor(void) { struct spi_mem_op op; spi_nor_read_any_reg(&op); } $ x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc-12 -O2 -ftrivial-auto-var-init=pattern -Wuninitialized x86-64 gcc 12.3 (Editor #1) x86-64 gcc 12.3 - 905ms (5966B) ~392 lines filtered Output of x86-64 gcc 12.3 (Compiler #1) <source>: In function 's25fs256t_post_bfpt_fixup_nor': <source>:12:21: warning: 'op' is used uninitialized [-Wuninitialized] 12 | struct spi_mem_op op; | ^~ <source>:12:21: note: 'op' declared here 12 | struct spi_mem_op op; | ^~ See also https://godbolt.org/z/o96GfTaaT gcc-11 and earlier don't show this behavior because they do not support -ftrivial-auto-var-init=pattern. I notice that in the example above, the first 16 bytes of the structure are intialized to zero with an x86 SSE instruction since they do not contain any actual data bytes, just single bits. This seems to be the same underlying problem as in bug #104550, but that one is marked fixed and I cannot reproduce it on gcc-12 or gcc-13.