Thread: c programs

Usually because you made a run-time error and not a compile-time error.
For more information, we need to see code!

Originally Posted by richi

why some c programs are not run even if there is no error in compile time??????????

You mean like this one:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main() {
	char *overflowme;
	strcpy(overflowme,"this will overwrite some memory");
	printf("%s", overflowme);
	return 0;
}

Because the compiler does not check stuff like this. Perhaps it should, and this is a performance trade-off in the compiler.

On the other hand, programming need not be quite so easy as throwing darts blindfolded (which really is easy if you don't care what you hit). You have to know what you are doing. To know you have to learn, partially thru a process of trial and error. It's not nearly as painful as learning to ride a bike, and you already did that (hopefully).

Lesson: Don't expect the compiler to fix everything for you, and be happy when it does.

They can, and some do.

No, some do. 99% of the compilers do not, but some, like MSVC can check for problems like this. It's not good to dismiss out of hand. But it's certainly not good to always rely on such a feature.

And if you do this:

Code:

int mostlypointless (int x) {
     int a = 12, i;
     for (i=0; i<10; i++) a = a*i+a;
     return x+1;
}

GCC -O3 will just ignore the statements in red as if they didn't exist, because they are meaningless in the context of the program.

The only way to notice this (I guess) is if you use massive meaningless loops for profiling. Compiled gcc -O3, they won't happen.

It's extremely helpful to offer such code analysis, because it can find problems in your code.
Naturally, it is also slower, so there should always be an option to turn it off. Otherwise the compiler is flawed.
Or perhaps you don't like the compiler removing certain code in optimizations?

Const doesn't help very much at all. It's mostly for for convenience and efficiency.

Originally Posted by Elysia

It's extremely helpful to offer such code analysis, because it can find problems in your code.
Naturally, it is also slower, so there should always be an option to turn it off. Otherwise the compiler is flawed.

Hmm... I disagree. That's definitely not the task of a compiler. Abachler said it best.

That type of code analysis can and should be done by specialized tools only. MSVC offers those tools in its Team System releases. Tools like Code Metrics, C/C++ Code Analysis Tools, Application Verifier, Line Level Sampling and even Code Profiler (and there's even more).

Note that by "compiler", I mean the actual task of code compilation. In this context I don't agree such tasks should be implemented. In fact I suspect most of them couldn't, since better diagnostics can only be achieved after compilation and during program execution with access to debugging symbols, which is what most of the tools above do. On the other hand, if we consider the tasks of a compiler (lexical analysis, pre-processing, parsing and code generation with/without optimization) we can see there is really no place for such analysis as the excellent example provided by Mk27 demonstrates.

Again, go back to abachler statement. There's an underlying truth to it that basically says it's not the task of the compiler to make sure your code works as you want it to.