[LLVMdev] Strange pointer aliasing behaviour

[Pierre C]

>> Consider a case like the following:
>> struct X { int a; int b[10]; };
>> int f(struct X* a) { a->b[-1] = 1; return a->a; }
>>
>> This is technically illegal code, but various programs depend on
>> constructs like this working.
>>

Actually if you want to do bit-casting in C the usual way is to very  
carefully use an union which informs the compiler that there will be  
aliasing...

> Those programs are buggy and should be fixed.

Totally agree. Making such ugly things work means lots of optimizations  
can't be performed.

I wonder if llvm intentionnally generates this spurious alias (to make  
badly written code work) or is it just the optimizer not being smart  
enough yet ?...