Simple bounds check hack

engler@AMSTERDAM.LCS.MIT.EDU (Dawson R. Engler)
Thu, 10 Mar 1994 23:36:47 GMT

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Simple bounds check hack engler@AMSTERDAM.LCS.MIT.EDU (1994-03-10)
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: engler@AMSTERDAM.LCS.MIT.EDU (Dawson R. Engler)
Keywords: debug
Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 23:36:47 GMT

Many languages provide array bounds checking, typically through
an expression of the form:


(index >= 0 && index < size)


On a 2's complement machine where 'size' is non-negative this can be
easily replaced by


((unsigned)index < (unsigned)size)


saving a comparision and branch in the common case.


This optimization is simple enough that I'm embarassed to post
it, but the compilers I have looked at get it wrong ;-)


Regards,
Dawson Engler
engler@amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu
--


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