[LLVMdev] A question about pointer aliasing rules in LLVM

[Pranav Bhandarkar]

Hi,

I have the following IR code

</snippet>
%prev = getelementptr inbounds %struct.myStruct* %node, i32 0, i32 1
%1 = load %struct.myStruct** %prev, align 4, !tbaa !0
%next1 = getelementptr inbounds %struct.myStruct* %1, i32 0, i32 0
store %struct.myStruct* %0, %struct.myStruct** %next1, align 4, !tbaa !0
%2 = load %struct.myStruct** %prev, align 4, !tbaa !
</snippet>

myStruct is defined as

struct myStruct {
   struct myStruct *next;
   struct myStruct *prev;
};

In the snippet above, %1 can be reused instead of the load for %2. The
problem is that according to BasicAliasAnalysis, %prev "mayAlias"es with
%next1 and so the store to %next1 clobbers %1.

The point is that %next1 is (struct mysStruct * + 0) while %prev is (struct
myStruct * + 4) so they should not alias. The problem is that they do not
have the same base (%node and %1) but the type of the base is the same.
BasicAliasAnalysis is able to distinguish between them if they  have the
same base, but not the same type.  Is it wrong to get BasicAliasAnalysis to
look at the type of the base pointer and take a more aggressive approach if
the base pointer type is the same ? I got this impression on reading
http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html#pointeraliasing as it seems to suggest
that types are not associated with memory. 

Can this situation be helped ?

Thanks,
Pranav
Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. is a member of Code Aurora Forum, hosted by
The Linux Foundation