Precise widening when a loop condition involves a char or short
ID0000325: **This issue was created automatically from Mantis Issue 325. Further discussion may take place here.** --- | **Id** | **Project** | **Category** | **View** | **Due Date** | **Updated** | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | ID0000325 | Frama-C | Plug-in > Eva | public | 2009-11-07 | 2014-02-12 | | | | | | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | **Reporter** | pascal | **Assigned To** | pascal | **Resolution** | fixed | | **Priority** | normal | **Severity** | feature | **Reproducibility** | always | | **Platform** | - | **OS** | - | **OS Version** | - | | **Product Version** | Frama-C Beryllium-20090902 | **Target Version** | - | **Fixed in Version** | Frama-C Boron-20100401 | ### Description : > Depending the type of i, the range is not the same. > The range of i in the loop is [0..10] (for int) or [0..15] for char or > short. _____ void main(void) { char i=0; int j=0; while (i<10) i++; while (j<10) j++; } [value] ====== VALUES COMPUTED ====== [value] Values for function main: i IN {10; 11; 12; 13; 14; 15; } j IN {10; } _____ Note that the AST for the two loops is different: i = (char)0; j = 0; while ((int )i < 10) {i = (char )((int )i + 1);} while (j < 10) {j ++;} CIL transforms the code thus because the standard specifies that operators such as ++ do not operate on types smaller than int, and that values of these types are implicitly promoted to int in these conditions. Meanwhile, in the absence of any loop-related option, the value analysis tries to keep computations short at the price of precision by using a technique called "widening". In order to limit the loss of precision, however, various heuristics are used, including a syntactic one for the j loop that recognizes that j IN [0..10] is a good candidate for the loop invariant. These heuristic does not currently recognize the condition ((int )i < 10) as one where it would be valuable to try the same kind of invariant.
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