[llvm-dev] RFC: New function attribute HasInaccessibleState

[Krzysztof Parzyszek via llvm-dev]

On 12/4/2015 11:21 AM, Vaivaswatha Nagaraj wrote:
>
>  >That's in practice impossible to guarantee, both by the compiler and
> by the programmer.
> I'm not sure I understand this. Why would it be impossible for the
> compiler to propagate this flag along the call graph upwards? As an
> example, malloc has the flag set, and this is propagated to whoever
> calls malloc, and then to whoever calls that function and so on.

Most of the time you don't have the entire call graph information. 
Imagine that you are developing a module that is a part of a larger 
project.  Functions in the other modules would need to have their flags 
updated based on what your functions do.

If you want to have an attribute stating that a function behaves better 
than what the compiler would normally assume, then the callers may but 
don't have to have that attribute set.  If you require that attribute 
for correctness, you will run into problems.  The sentence "For example, 
printf would have the flag set, preventing two calls to printfs (without 
the return value being used) from being interchanged." and the rest of 
that paragraph suggests the latter.

-Krzysztof

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