Re: A Famous Security Bug

Kaz Kylheku:

If C compilers warned about every piece of dead code that
is eliminated, you'd be up to your ears in diagnostics all
day.

Is so much dead code a defect in the source or a benigh
consequence of a well-pondered decision?

If you do want the code deleted, that doesn't always mean
you can do it yoruself. What gets eliminated can be target
dependent:
>
  switch (sizeof (long)) {
  case 4: ...
  case 8: ..
  }

The case above is IMHO best handled by conditional
compilation, even though more work may be required to
dispatch on a type size in the preprocessor.

Because memset is part of the C language, the compiler
knows exactly what effect it has (that it's equivalent to
setting all the bytes to zero, like a sequence of
assignments).

Yes, it is an instance of a special case relying upon hard-
coded information.  Why not, however, let the programmer
elimitate this dead code from his code, if it /is/ dead?

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