https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=114923
Bug ID: 114923 Summary: gcc ignores escaping pointer and applies invalid optimization Product: gcc Version: unknown Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: normal Priority: P3 Component: c Assignee: unassigned at gcc dot gnu.org Reporter: nfxjfg at googlemail dot com Target Milestone: --- Created attachment 58088 --> https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/attachment.cgi?id=58088&action=edit Test case In this test case, the pointer to a stack-allocated variable is passed to a volatile variable. That means the pointer definitely escapes. But the compiler seems to assume that the memory can't change, and returns the initialization value of the buf variable. I tried multiple variations of this. Sometimes it generates the correct code, even though the situation is exactly the same. A call to an external function often fixes it, but sometimes not (could not produce a reduced test case of the latter). This is reduced from some real-word code. The first register access passes the memory pointer to the hardware, the second access starts the DMA. In the real-world code there was some more stuff such as waiting for the DMA to finish, but it doesn't matter for code generation. The code started to fail after a DMA buffer was moved from a global variable to the stack. Originally experienced on 12.2.0 / riscv32-unknown-elf, but on godlbolt I can reproduce it with trunk and some other architectures.