[LLVMdev] Constant folding inttoptr i32 0 to null pointer?

[Benyei, Guy]

Currently it seems to work fine, but as you said, this behavior is not exactly well defined. I would really expect any access to null - no matter in what address space - to be replaced with undef by some optimization pass.

"An integer constant other than zero or a pointer value returned from a function not defined within LLVM may be associated with address ranges allocated through mechanisms other than those provided by LLVM. Such ranges shall not overlap with any ranges of addresses allocated by mechanisms provided by LLVM."

Doesn't it mean, that the integer constant zero cannot be associated with any kind of memory, including non-default address space memory? Seems that address 0 still has to be handled somehow...

Thanks
        Guy

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Berlin [mailto:dberlin at dberlin.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 23:22
To: Benyei, Guy
Cc: David Majnemer; llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] Constant folding inttoptr i32 0 to null pointer?

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 11:34 AM, Benyei, Guy <guy.benyei at intel.com> wrote:
> Thanks David,
>
> It turns out, that the address space I was using was not 0, and yet 
> the pointer was constant folded to null.
>

The lang ref is not entirely clear on whether 0 is always equal to the null pointer. It (at least to me) implies it is:
"
Any memory access must be done through a pointer value associated with an address range of the memory access, otherwise the behavior is undefined. Pointer values are associated with address ranges according to the following rules:
...

A pointer value is associated with the addresses associated with any value it is based on.
A null pointer in the default address-space is associated with no address.
An integer constant other than zero or a pointer value returned from a function not defined within LLVM may be associated with address ranges allocated through mechanisms other than those provided by LLVM. Such ranges shall not overlap with any ranges of addresses allocated by mechanisms provided by LLVM.
....

A pointer value formed by an inttoptr is based on all pointer values that contribute (directly or indirectly) to the computation of the pointer’s value.

"
(Fun lawyering: This, and the remaining clauses, do not ever define the behavior of a null pointer constant in the non-default address space, which means it's behavior is undefined by the first sentence. I know this is not what is intended, so this should probably be cleaned
up)

Anyway, the above to me implies the inttoptr of the integer constant zero is the null pointer, because if it isn't, it's a pretty striking omission to cover everything *but* the integer constant zero ;).

As such, folding it to null should be correct, and not cause wrong behavior for your program.

As David says, the question of whether it can be dereferenced or not is separate, specifically to allow the null pointer in non-default address spaces to do different things.

Do you have a case where it does something wrong?

>
> The contant folder doesn’t seem to check for address space, it simply 
> checks if the integer in question is zero, and folds the inttoptr to null:
>
>

I believe this is correct by the above.
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