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Re: mips-tdep.c: Sign-extend pointers for n32
On Wed, Dec 19, 2007 at 04:07:13PM +0000, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> But in practice it should not matter -- however you represent 8-bit and
> 16-bit quantities you cannot overflow into the 64-bit data space as with a
> flip of the bit #31 the upper 32 bits follow and when a result is written
> back to memory or is otherwise finally processed (like output in a textual
> form) it has to be masked to its data width again (obviously "sb/sh" do
> this implicitly). So I believe the change is correct as it is and the
> question is academic. Let me know if you think otherwise.
I happen to know otherwise. I once wasted several days tracking down
a bug in the Linux kernel's IP checksumming implementation which
resulted in incorrectly extended values in registers; there are MIPS
parts which really do behave unpredictably when you use 32-bit
arithmetic operations on them (specifically the Broadcom SB1).
And I believe a compiler would be justified in using such instructions
on a signed char argument.
--
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery