[cfe-dev] Embedded conditionals not being evaluated correctly?

[Douglas Gregor]

On Jul 29, 2010, at 9:03 AM, Michael Jackson wrote:

> I have code that looks something like this:
> 
> 
> bool evaluate(int i, int j) { return (i < j) ? true : false; }
> 
> void function()
> {
> int i = 0;
> int j = 1;
> if ( evaluate(i, j) == true ) { }
> else { std::cout << "This is BAD" << std::endl; }
> 
> }
> 
> when I compile this code with clang (latest SVN head) and then run it I will get
> the "This is BAD" printed out which is obviously NOT correct. If I change the code
> to introduce an intermediate variable:
> 
> bool b = evaluate(i,j);
> if ( b == true ) { }
> else { std::cout << "This is BAD" << std::endl; }
> 
> this this compiles and runs just fine.
> 
> The fun part in all of this is that I am unable to create a small reproducible test case
> for a bug report. I have used the OS X 10.6 gdb to debug through the code and verify what
> should really be going on and that the executable is NOT matching what should be happening.
> 
> If I compile my code with GCC then I get the expected results. 

Unfortunately, that's not much for us to go on, since we don't know the code in question. It may not even be a Clang bug, if there's undefined behavior or order-of-evaluation issues involved.

> My question is simple: Are there known or questionable issues with clang++ and nested conditionals
> that evaluate to C++ bool? I did some searches through the clang bugzilla but did not identify my problems.


Does the actual condition involve temporary objects? The most likely culprit would be our handling of temporaries, e.g., that we destroy a temporary too soon, forget to destroy a temporary that matters, or perform some kind of unsanctioned copy.

	- Doug