Updated, see below!
I have heard and read that C++0x allows an compiler to print "Hello" for the following snippet
#include <iostream>
int main() {
while(1)
;
std::cout << "Hello" << std::endl;
}
It apparently has something to do with threads and optimization capabilities. It looks to me that this can surprise many people though.
Does someone have a good explanation of why this was necessary to allow? For reference, the most recent C++0x draft says at 6.5/5
A loop that, outside of the for-init-statement in the case of a for statement,
- makes no calls to library I/O functions, and
- does not access or modify volatile objects, and
- performs no synchronization operations (1.10) or atomic operations (Clause 29)
may be assumed by the implementation to terminate. [ Note: This is intended to allow compiler transfor- mations, such as removal of empty loops, even when termination cannot be proven. — end note ]
Edit:
This insightful article says about that Standards text
Unfortunately, the words "undefined behavior" are not used. However, anytime the standard says "the compiler may assume P," it is implied that a program which has the property not-P has undefined semantics.
Is that correct, and is the compiler allowed to print "Bye" for the above program?
There is an even more insightful thread here, which is about an analogous change to C, started off by the Guy done the above linked article. Among other useful facts, they present a solution that seems to also apply to C++0x (Update: This won't work anymore with n3225 - see below!)
endless:
goto endless;
A compiler is not allowed to optimize that away, it seems, because it's not a loop, but a jump. Another guy summarizes the proposed change in C++0x and C201X
By writing a loop, the programmer is asserting either that the loop does something with visible behavior (performs I/O, accesses volatile objects, or performs synchronization or atomic operations), or that it eventually terminates. If I violate that assumption by writing an infinite loop with no side effects, I am lying to the compiler, and my program's behavior is undefined. (If I'm lucky, the compiler might warn me about it.) The language doesn't provide (no longer provides?) a way to express an infinite loop without visible behavior.
Update on 3.1.2011 with n3225: Committee moved the text to 1.10/24 and say
The implementation may assume that any thread will eventually do one of the following:
- terminate,
- make a call to a library I/O function,
- access or modify a volatile object, or
- perform a synchronization operation or an atomic operation.
The goto trick will not work anymore!
Does someone have a good explanation of why this was necessary to allow?
Yes, Hans Boehm provides a rationale for this in N1528: Why undefined behavior for infinite loops?, although this is WG14 document the rationale applies to C++ as well and the document refers to both WG14 and WG21:
As N1509 correctly points out, the current draft essentially gives undefined behavior to infinite loops in 6.8.5p6. A major issue for doing so is that it allows code to move across a potentially non-terminating loop. For example, assume we have the following loops, where count and count2 are global variables (or have had their address taken), and p is a local variable, whose address has not been taken:
for (p = q; p != 0; p = p -> next) { ++count; } for (p = q; p != 0; p = p -> next) { ++count2; }Could these two loops be merged and replaced by the following loop?
for (p = q; p != 0; p = p -> next) { ++count; ++count2; }Without the special dispensation in 6.8.5p6 for infinite loops, this would be disallowed: If the first loop doesn't terminate because q points to a circular list, the original never writes to count2. Thus it could be run in parallel with another thread that accesses or updates count2. This is no longer safe with the transformed version which does access count2 in spite of the infinite loop. Thus the transformation potentially introduces a data race.
In cases like this, it is very unlikely that a compiler would be able to prove loop termination; it would have to understand that q points to an acyclic list, which I believe is beyond the ability of most mainstream compilers, and often impossible without whole program information.
The restrictions imposed by non-terminating loops are a restriction on the optimization of terminating loops for which the compiler cannot prove termination, as well as on the optimization of actually non-terminating loops. The former are much more common than the latter, and often more interesting to optimize.
There are clearly also for-loops with an integer loop variable in which it would be difficult for a compiler to prove termination, and it would thus be difficult for the compiler to restructure loops without 6.8.5p6. Even something like
for (i = 1; i != 15; i += 2)or
for (i = 1; i <= 10; i += j)seems nontrivial to handle. (In the former case, some basic number theory is required to prove termination, in the latter case, we need to know something about the possible values of j to do so. Wrap-around for unsigned integers may complicate some of this reasoning further.)
This issue seems to apply to almost all loop restructuring transformations, including compiler parallelization and cache-optimization transformations, both of which are likely to gain in importance, and are already often important for numerical code. This appears likely to turn into a substantial cost for the benefit of being able to write infinite loops in the most natural way possible, especially since most of us rarely write intentionally infinite loops.
The one major difference with C is that C11 provides an exception for controlling expressions that are constant expressions which differs from C++ and makes your specific example well-defined in C11.
With the adoption of P2809 at the 2024-03 Tokyo ISO C++ Committee meeting. Trivial infinite loops are no longer undefined behavior in C++.
This does not change the essence of the answer but does move C++ to be more in line with C here. It allows users to use what most would consider to be idiomatic infinite loops safety.