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Doesn't *t = 1 invoke UB if t is null?

Edit: I'm a moron, thanks for pointing out the obvious to me :)




Yes, but note that the assignment occurs after the NULL check. If the grandparent did mean to put it before, then the code snippet would be undefined, but it wouldn't be surprising either.


I guess one could still be evil and pass a pointer to a non-int type to the function. That example is really bad, you don't need a void pointer to show this ub 'optimization'.


That'd still be defined though. It'd just be defined to set the first sizeof(int) bytes of `* p` to 1. ;) void * and (char * ) can alias to anything and the compiler has to make it work.

Of course if you pass a pointer to a type smaller than sizeof(int)-1 bytes then it accesses uninitialized memory which is UB, but that's a different issue.

EDIT: Aaaand I wasn't thinking.

̶E̶D̶I̶T̶ ̶E̶D̶I̶T̶:̶ ̶N̶o̶t̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶I̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶-̶r̶e̶a̶d̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶v̶o̶i̶d̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶i̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶C̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶(̶t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶I̶I̶R̶C̶ ̶G̶C̶C̶ ̶t̶r̶e̶a̶t̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶r̶ ̶p̶o̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶r̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶i̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶)̶.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Actually maybe it can and I shouldn't be reading technical docs at 2am.


That is not correct. The type used to write to the memory is int, not void or char. If the object, whose address is passed to the function is not compatible with int, the behavior is undefined.

You should read about strict aliasing, you will be surprised.


You're right, I misread and misinterpreted that! Thanks.

Somehow I wasn't thinking and didn't realize that `t` aliases whatever was passed as `p`, and dereferencing a non int or char pointer would be undefined there.


On Firefox your edit strikethrough makes the page very very wide.


Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the standard before preaching about how easy it is to comply with it.




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