From 6e9057b0ef152f7a0ef7b2c523f7b10f20ba9197 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Chris Lattner Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 23:33:52 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] add some more notes. git-svn-id: https://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk@81170 91177308-0d34-0410-b5e6-96231b3b80d8 --- docs/LangRef.html | 41 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 40 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/docs/LangRef.html b/docs/LangRef.html index 4308d312730..596066d3270 100644 --- a/docs/LangRef.html +++ b/docs/LangRef.html @@ -2118,7 +2118,46 @@ logically read from arbitrary registers that happen to be around when needed, so the value is not neccesarily consistent over time. In fact, %A and %C need to have the same semantics of the core LLVM "replace all uses with" concept would not hold.

- + +
+
+  %A = fdiv undef, %X
+  %B = fdiv %X, undef
+Safe:
+  %A = undef
+b: unreachable
+
+
+ +

These examples show the crucial difference between an undefined +value and undefined behavior. An undefined value (like undef) is +allowed to have an arbitrary bit-pattern. This means that the %A operation +can be constant folded to undef because the undef could be an SNaN, and fdiv is +not (currently) defined on SNaN's. However, in the second example, we can make +a more aggressive assumption: because the undef is allowed to be an arbitrary +value, we are allowed to assume that it could be zero. Since a divide by zero +is has undefined behavior, we are allowed to assume that the operation +does not execute at all. This allows us to delete the divide and all code after +it: since the undefined operation "can't happen", the optimizer can assume that +it occurs in dead code. +

+ +
+
+a:  store undef -> %X
+b:  store %X -> undef
+Safe:
+a: <deleted>
+b: unreachable
+
+
+ +

These examples reiterate the fdiv example: a store "of" an undefined value +can be assumed to not have any effect: we can assume that the value is +overwritten with bits that happen to match what was already there. However, a +store "to" an undefined location could clobber arbitrary memory, therefore, it +has undefined behavior.

+