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Top Forums Programming -Warray-bounds option to GCC compiler Post 303013090 by bakunin on Wednesday 14th of February 2018 05:46:52 PM
Old 02-14-2018
Quote:
Originally Posted by milhan
What exactly is the -Warray-bounds option to the GCC compiler supposed to warn about?
I am not sure about how basic you need an explanation because the man page is pretty self-explanatory. So just give me some feedback if this doesn't make you get it:

Consider a "normal" variable first: a variable is of a certain data type and hence represents a certain amount of (allocated) memory somewhere in RAM. I.e. when you write a declaration like:

Code:
int myvar

then the compiler sets aside a certain amount of bytes (depends on how "int" is defined, but nowadays usually 4 bytes ^= 32 bits) and you can address this 4-byte space by using the name "myvar".

Now arrays: arrays are basically lists of elements where each element is a variable like above. If you i.e. create an array of 7 elements of the type int the compiler will set aside the same 4 bytes as above - not once but seven times. These seven 4-byte-spaces will be placed one after the other. If you now adress the third element with some operation the compiler "knows" that the elements are 4-byte-blocks and therefore will translate that to byte 9-12 following the base address.

So far so good, but what would happen if you would request the eighth element, hmm? If the compiler doesn't "remember" that your element only has seven elements it would eventually give you the content of byte 29-32 - which holds some other data! What would happen if you'd requested the -2nd element? You might get data which aren't even part of the program (but maybe some OS data!).

These method of accessing array elements which don't even exist have been used historically to get access to memory parts the program would normally not have access to. Modern OSes have all sorts of security measures to make this impossible, but you can still accidentally access (and hence modify) your own program in memory for some probably unwanted effects.

To avoid this there is bounds checking: basically it is the complier making sure whatever array elements you access are being defined before.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
This User Gave Thanks to bakunin For This Post:
 

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array(n)						       Tcl Built-In Commands							  array(n)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NAME
array - Manipulate array variables SYNOPSIS
array option arrayName ?arg arg ...? _________________________________________________________________ DESCRIPTION
This command performs one of several operations on the variable given by arrayName. Unless otherwise specified for individual commands below, arrayName must be the name of an existing array variable. The option argument determines what action is carried out by the command. The legal options (which may be abbreviated) are: array anymore arrayName searchId Returns 1 if there are any more elements left to be processed in an array search, 0 if all elements have already been returned. SearchId indicates which search on arrayName to check, and must have been the return value from a previous invocation of array startsearch. This option is particularly useful if an array has an element with an empty name, since the return value from array nextelement won't indicate whether the search has been completed. array donesearch arrayName searchId This command terminates an array search and destroys all the state associated with that search. SearchId indicates which search on arrayName to destroy, and must have been the return value from a previous invocation of array startsearch. Returns an empty string. array exists arrayName Returns 1 if arrayName is an array variable, 0 if there is no variable by that name or if it is a scalar variable. array get arrayName ?pattern? Returns a list containing pairs of elements. The first element in each pair is the name of an element in arrayName and the second element of each pair is the value of the array element. The order of the pairs is undefined. If pattern is not specified, then all of the elements of the array are included in the result. If pattern is specified, then only those elements whose names match pat- tern (using the matching rules of string match) are included. If arrayName isn't the name of an array variable, or if the array contains no elements, then an empty list is returned. array names arrayName ?pattern? Returns a list containing the names of all of the elements in the array that match pattern (using the matching rules of string match). If pattern is omitted then the command returns all of the element names in the array. If there are no (matching) elements in the array, or if arrayName isn't the name of an array variable, then an empty string is returned. array nextelement arrayName searchId Returns the name of the next element in arrayName, or an empty string if all elements of arrayName have already been returned in this search. The searchId argument identifies the search, and must have been the return value of an array startsearch command. Warning: if elements are added to or deleted from the array, then all searches are automatically terminated just as if array done- search had been invoked; this will cause array nextelement operations to fail for those searches. array set arrayName list Sets the values of one or more elements in arrayName. list must have a form like that returned by array get, consisting of an even number of elements. Each odd-numbered element in list is treated as an element name within arrayName, and the following element in list is used as a new value for that array element. If the variable arrayName does not already exist and list is empty, arrayName is created with an empty array value. array size arrayName Returns a decimal string giving the number of elements in the array. If arrayName isn't the name of an array then 0 is returned. array startsearch arrayName This command initializes an element-by-element search through the array given by arrayName, such that invocations of the array nex- telement command will return the names of the individual elements in the array. When the search has been completed, the array done- search command should be invoked. The return value is a search identifier that must be used in array nextelement and array done- search commands; it allows multiple searches to be underway simultaneously for the same array. | array unset arrayName ?pattern? | Unsets all of the elements in the array that match pattern (using the matching rules of string match). If arrayName isn't the name | of an array variable or there are no matching elements in the array, then an empty string is returned. If pattern is omitted and is | it an array variable, then the command unsets the entire array. KEYWORDS
array, element names, search Tcl 8.3 array(n)
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