[LLVMdev] Null pointers with a non-0 representation

[Kuperstein, Michael M]

I feel a bit silly asking this, but here goes.

The C spec  does not require the null pointer to be implemented as an integer with the 0 bit-pattern. The implementation may arbitrarily choose any other (integer, but not necessarily) representation, as long as it's distinct from any legal pointer. The only requirement is that casting an integer 0 to a pointer type results in a null pointer.
LLVM IR appears to have similar the casting behavior.  That is, if I try to create a pointer with integer value 0 (e.g. by constructing an inttoptr constant expression with a i32 0 argument), it gets immediately folded into a null pointer constant. Furthermore, a PtrToInt from a null pointer results in 0 (which is even "stricter" than the C spec.)

So, that raises a few question:

a)      Are those the desired semantics? I guess if clang generates this kind of IntToPtr instructions (as opposed to directly resolving the cast to a null pointer) this is unavoidable. But otherwise, why does LLVM treat null pointers and pointers with the integer value 0 as equivalent?
It's completely natural for most platforms, but isn't necessarily the right thing to do.

b)      Assuming this is really desirable, should the fact that casting an integer 0 to a pointer type results in a null pointer be documented in the langref (as part of the inttoptr/ptrtoint documentation)? Or is it too "low-level"?

c)       Let's say I want to create a pointer with the numeric value 0, distinct from the null pointer, because 0 really does represent a valid pointer on my platform. Should this possible at the IR level? If it should be, then how?

Anyone has any inputs, except laughing me out of the (virtual) room? :-)

Thanks,
   Michael
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