Re: Wrong

From:
Kai-Uwe Bux <jkherciueh@gmx.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sat, 17 Apr 2010 23:55:07 +0200
Message-ID:
<hqdans$tp$1@news.doubleSlash.org>
Joshua Maurice wrote:

On Apr 17, 12:49 pm, "Leigh Johnston" <le...@i42.co.uk> wrote:

A certain regular of this newsgroup thinks the following code is not
wrong, discuss.

void foo()
{
std::vector<int> v;
v.reserve(2);
v.push_back(41);
*(&v[0]+1) = 42;

}

The actual definition of "wrong" may vary from individual to individual
as does common sense so it seems.

This may help:


If by wrong, you mean undefined behavior, then yes. The push_back is
fine, but the next line writes to an area which has been reserved but
not in the size.


a) Huh? At

  *(&v[0]+1) = 42

the size is already 1, because of the previous push_back. So, I don't see a
write to something not in the size.

I know of several debug implementations of the
standard library which will crash horribly and report the error of the
code.


That would be interesting. Even replacing 1 by 2:

  *( &v[0] + 2 ) = 42

I am aware only of implementations that would catch v[2] = 42. The &v[0]+2
is effectively bypassing the library implementation since &v[0] returns a
plain pointer, which then is subject to ordinary pointer arithmetic. If an
implementation catches an out-of-bounds error here, it would not be because
of the way the _library_ is implemented.

Also: the pointer arithmetic is actually not out of bounds.

Upshot: I don't see undefined behavior in the code.

Best

Kai-Uwe Bux

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