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.**
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| **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.
issue