Aw: Re: Help stabilising mini-gmp

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2016-12-02 12:18:25 +0100, Wolf Lammen wrote:
> Gesendet: Freitag, 02. Dezember 2016 um 01:30 Uhr
> Von: "Vincent Lefevre" <vincent at vinc17.net>
> An: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe at math.utah.edu>
> Cc: gmp-devel at gmplib.org
> Betreff: Re: Help stabilising mini-gmp
[...]
> > I'm not talking about a zero shift count, but a shift of the value 0
> > with an arbitrary shift count, e.g. (uint64_t) 0 << 64. This is
> > undefined behavior, but I wonder why. When mapped to a hardware
> > instruction, does the result depend on the platform?
> 
> I wonder whether the possibly multiple encodings of 0 is the reason.
> We are used to two's complement encoding of integers, but the C/C++
> standard allows other (from the today's point of view exotic)
> encodings like for example one's complement. And here 0 can have the
> encoding all bits clear or all bits set. Now left shift FFFFFFFF ...

No, this is not the reason. For instance, 0 << 1 is well-defined
and the result is 0. So, on such a processor, the compiler would
have to make sure that 0 is represented as a positive 0 (all bits
clear) before the hardware shift is done. Then the fact that this
should work with valid shift counts implies that this will still
work with out-of-range shift counts: the register with all bits
clear will always give a value with all bits clear, whatever the
shift count.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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