Re: Is new observable behavior?

From:
Greg Herlihy <greghe@mac.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 2 Apr 2009 06:07:02 CST
Message-ID:
<f72829f8-f997-48e3-aa4d-47f8b40c65b8@v23g2000pro.googlegroups.com>
On Apr 1, 2:54 pm, Chris <cuz...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Apr 1, 12:04 pm, Edward Rosten <Edward.Ros...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is a call to new and delete observable behavior? Is the compiler free
to optimize:

int test_new_optimization(int i)
{
        int* tmp = new int;
        *tmp = i;
        int j = *tmp;
        delete tmp;
        return j;
}

into:

int test_new_optimization(int i)
{
   return i;

}


#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>

void * operator new(std::size_t size) {
   std::cerr << "Observable? (new)" << std::endl;
   return std::malloc(size);

}

void operator delete(void * ptr) {
   std::cerr << "Observable? (delete)" << std::endl;
   std::free(ptr);
}
...
Here's the output:

./a.out
Observable? (new)
Observable? (delete)
test_new_optimization(3) is `3'

Thus, it's observable.


These two particular implementations of new() and delete() have
observable behavior. In general, though, new() and delete() do not
perform any I/O or have any other kind of observable behavior. So the
answer to the original question, is - for all practical purposes -
"yes" - the compiler will almost certainly be free to eliminate the
calls to new() and delete().

 Assuming that my operator overloads did
something important in addition to just allocating/releasing
memory, I would be unhappy to discover that the compiler didn't
actually call them.


If the overloaded functions have no observable behavior - then there
would be no way for you to discover whether or not the program
actually called them.

Greg

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