Re: STL::glice vs cstdio

From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Daniel_Kr=FCgler?= <daniel.kruegler@googlemail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:45:41 CST
Message-ID:
<b17b6daf-48e2-464d-bcb5-f1e0c71d28f6@b35g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>
On 20 Jun., 21:57, n...@cam.ac.uk wrote:

I have some code where executing some completely irrelevant calls in
cstdio causes gslice to throw a segmentation fault; a previous code
(which was buggy) caused the use of gslice to cause cerr/cout to
throw away all their output! Now, the most likely explanation is
that I have missed some critical constraint on the use of gslice
arrays, but blowed if I can spot one.

This was under Linux, and I shall retry under Microsoft tomorrow
(if our local systems have enough compiler support). The original
program was solid with checking, so it's not a simple bounds error.
The appended code is really stripped down and fails if the argument
count is greater than 1 but not otherwise.

Any suggestions welcome.


I checked your code analytically and I found only
little, nevertheless, I hope it might help you.
Let me first ask a question: According to which
standard (C++98, C++03, C++0x) did you compile your
code? (See below, why)?

life.cpp:

using namespace std;


I'm not kidding, but did you really write this using-
directive *in front* of the std headers and w/o any
previous namespace std definition? If so, your
compiler must be very tolerant (it should not even
be allowed in C++98 to use a using-directive w/o
a previous namespace definition) and I strongly suggest
to move this directive after the include's.

#include <valarray>
#include <cstdio>

class Matrix {
private:
    valarray<signed char> *base;
    int stride, offset;
public:
    Matrix (int lwb1, int lim1, int lwb2, int lim2);
    gslice_array<signed char> slice (int lwb1, int lim1, int lwb2, int lim2);
};

Matrix::Matrix (int lwb1, int lim1, int lwb2, int lim2) {
    this->base = new valarray<signed char>((size_t)((lim1-lwb1)*(lim2-lwb2)));
    this->stride = lim2-lwb2;
    this->offset = lwb1*this->stride+lwb2;
}

gslice_array<signed char> Matrix::slice (int lwb1, int lim1,
        int lwb2, int lim2) {
    static valarray<size_t> length(2), stride(2);
    length[0] = lim1-lwb1;
    length[1] = lim2-lwb2;
    stride[0] = this->stride;
    stride[1] = 1;
    return (*this->base)[gslice(lwb1*this->stride+lwb2-offset,length,stride)];
}


As of C++98/03 this code should be ill-formed, because
std::gslice_array is not copyable. You should look
carefully at this, because if the compiler accepts
this, it might just work or - with some bad luck - it
might produce something nasty. This restriction has
been removed as of C++0x, though.

Let me note that I also looked for some particular
problem which might hit you - at least theoretically:
The standard says in all three versions that you meet
undefined behaviour, if the non-const overload of
valarray's operator[](const gslice&) sees degenerate
indices. I did calculate your indices by hand, but
I didn't find a violation of this restriction.

I also checked for normal boundary violations but I
didn't find any. This doesn't mean that there aren't any,
but I want just to give you the best information at
your hands that are available to me.

Last but not least I tried your code with the Visual
Studio 2008 compiler with a lot of runtime diagnostic
activated, but did not hit your problem (But I needed to
move your using directive after the std header includes
to get it accepted by the compiler).

Sorry, this is all I found. My best guess is that this
is indeed a defect in your valarray implementation.

Good luck & Greetings from Bremen,

Daniel Kr?gler

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