[llvm-dev] Is trapping allowed when an add with nsw flag overflows?

[John Regehr via llvm-dev]

No, trapping is not allowed, since an overflowing add nsw is defined to 
produce a poison value, which sort of explodes into undefined behavior 
if it reaches a side-effect.  This is to support speculative execution.

If you emit trapping adds for nsw, you'll see spurious traps every now 
and then.

There's a stronger form of undefined behavior, exhibited by things like 
divide by zero, that permits traps.

John



On 4/15/16 7:28 PM, Manuel Jacob via llvm-dev wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In our backend, we currently emit add operations that trap on overflow
> if the IR operation has the nsw flag set.  Is this allowed?
>
> According to the documentation about poison values, overflowing a nsw
> add is undefined behavior.  However I didn't find a formal definition of
> undefined behavior in LLVM.  Judging from previous discussions on the
> mailing list, there seems to be a vague line of what LLVM is allowed to
> do in case of undefined behavior.  Is trapping allowed?
>
> -Manuel
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