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c++type-conversionlanguage-lawyerundefined-behavior

How do I convert an arbitrary double to an integer while avoiding undefined behavior?


Let's say I've got a function that accepts a 64-bit integer, and I want to call it with a double with arbitrary numeric value (i.e. it may be very large in magnitude, or even infinite):

void DoSomething(int64_t x);

double d = [...];
DoSomething(d);

Paragraph 1 of [conv.fpint] in the C++11 standard says this:

A prvalue of a floating point type can be converted to a prvalue of an integer type. The conversion trun- cates; that is, the fractional part is discarded. The behavior is undefined if the truncated value cannot be represented in the destination type.

Therefore there are many values of d above that will cause undefined behavior. I would like conversion to saturate, so that values greater than std::numeric_limits<int64_t>::max() (called kint64max below), including infinity, become that value, and similarly with the minimum representable value. This seems the natural approach:

double clamped = std::min(d, static_cast<double>(kint64max));
clamped = std::max(clamped, static_cast<double>(kint64min));
DoSomething(clamped);

But, the next paragraph in the standard says this:

A prvalue of an integer type or of an unscoped enumeration type can be converted to a prvalue of a floating point type. The result is exact if possible. If the value being converted is in the range of values that can be represented but the value cannot be represented exactly, it is an implementation-defined choice of either the next lower or higher representable value.

So clamped may still wind up being kint64max + 1, and behavior may still be undefined.

What is the simplest portable way to do what I'm looking for? Bonus points if it also gracefully handles NaNs.

Update: To be more precise, I would like the following to all be true of an int64_t SafeCast(double) function that solves this problem:

  1. For any double d, calling SafeCast(d) does not perform undefined behavior according to the standard, nor does it throw an exception or otherwise abort.

  2. For any double d in the range [-2^63, 2^63), SafeCast(d) == static_cast<int64_t>(d). That is, SafeCast agrees with C++'s conversion rules wherever the latter is defined.

  3. For any double d >= 2^63, SafeCast(d) == kint64max.

  4. For any double d < -2^63, SafeCast(d) == kint64min.

I suspect the true difficulty here is in figuring out whether d is in the range [-2^63, 2^63). As discussed in the question and in comments to other answers, I think using a cast of kint64max to double to test for the upper bound is a non-starter due to undefined behavior. It may be more promising to use std::pow(2, 63), but I don't know whether this is guaranteed to be exactly 2^63.


Solution

  • It turns out this is simpler to do than I thought. Thanks to Michael O'Reilly for the basic idea of this solution.

    The heart of the matter is figuring out whether the truncated double will be representable as an int64_t. You can do this easily using std::frexp:

    #include <cmath>
    #include <limits>
    
    static constexpr int64_t kint64min = std::numeric_limits<int64_t>::min();
    static constexpr int64_t kint64max = std::numeric_limits<int64_t>::max();
    
    int64_t SafeCast(double d) {
      // We must special-case NaN, for which the logic below doesn't work.
      if (std::isnan(d)) {
        return 0;
      }
    
      // Find that exponent exp such that
      //     d == x * 2^exp
      // for some x with abs(x) in [0.5, 1.0). Note that this implies that the
      // magnitude of d is strictly less than 2^exp.
      //
      // If d is infinite, the call to std::frexp is legal but the contents of exp
      // are unspecified.
      int exp;
      std::frexp(d, &exp);
    
      // If the magnitude of d is strictly less than 2^63, the truncated version
      // of d is guaranteed to be representable. The only representable integer
      // for which this is not the case is kint64min, but it is covered by the
      // logic below.
      if (std::isfinite(d) && exp <= 63) {
        return d;
      }
    
      // Handle infinities and finite numbers with magnitude >= 2^63.
      return std::signbit(d) ? kint64min : kint64max;
    }