www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - bug in grammar with ?:

reply Brett <Brett gmail.com> writes:
Fails(loop is not taken):

for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= (true) ? 0 : 1; i--)


passes

for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= ((true) ? 0 : 1); i--)

Only difference is parenthesis(yes, that is all, doesn't matter 
if it's true or false)
Sep 17 2019
next sibling parent reply ketmar <ketmar ketmar.no-ip.org> writes:
Brett wrote:

 Fails(loop is not taken):

 for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= (true) ? 0 : 1; i--)


 passes

 for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= ((true) ? 0 : 1); i--)

 Only difference is parenthesis(yes, that is all, doesn't matter if it's 
 true or false)
not a bug. the whole thing before `?` is a condition, so i >= (true) ? 0 : 1 returns 0, of course, because `i >= 1` (your `len` is obviously >= 1), and the result of the expression is therefor 0.
Sep 17 2019
parent reply Brett <Brett gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 17 September 2019 at 18:06:55 UTC, ketmar wrote:
 Brett wrote:

 Fails(loop is not taken):

 for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= (true) ? 0 : 1; i--)


 passes

 for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= ((true) ? 0 : 1); i--)

 Only difference is parenthesis(yes, that is all, doesn't 
 matter if it's true or false)
not a bug. the whole thing before `?` is a condition, so i >= (true) ? 0 : 1 returns 0, of course, because `i >= 1` (your `len` is obviously
= 1), and the result of the expression is therefor 0.
Makes sense, seems bad though... can introduce severe bugs in code if allowed. While using ?: there is not such a common idiom, using >= (or <= is) Might be better for the compiler to detect such things and give a warning to use parenthesis? It could introduce subtle and hard to detect bugs. Probably 99% of for loops use the syntax of var >= ... I use it so much that way that I always think of ... as it's own expression rather than the entire part being an expression... it's my fault but I imagine 95% of programmers also think along similar ways. All it takes is forgetting this one time and one could have serious bugs(if the condition is complex and resolves in a hard to detect way it could produce such cases, rare but possible).
Sep 17 2019
next sibling parent Dennis <dkorpel gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 17 September 2019 at 18:16:41 UTC, Brett wrote:
 All it takes is forgetting this one time and one could have 
 serious bugs(if the condition is complex and resolves in a hard 
 to detect way it could produce such cases, rare but possible).
To be honest, your entire loop is one big code smell. for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= ((true) ? 0 : 1); i--) if len = 0, i will underflow and be initialized to ulong.max. i >= 0 is vacuously true for an unsigned integer, resulting in and endless loop I don't know your original situation, but if you can, please use foreach or foreach_reverse.
Sep 17 2019
prev sibling parent ketmar <ketmar ketmar.no-ip.org> writes:
Brett wrote:

 Makes sense, seems bad though... can introduce severe bugs in code if 
 allowed. While using ?: there is not such a common idiom, using >= (or <= 
 is)
yeah. that's why ternary is not recommended to use -- it is not always obvious what is a condition there. ternary has one of the lowest priorities, and it is right-associative too.
Sep 17 2019
prev sibling parent Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Tuesday, 17 September 2019 at 18:03:20 UTC, Brett wrote:
 for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= (true) ? 0 : 1; i--)
 for(ulong i = len - 1; i >= ((true) ? 0 : 1); i--)
Those are two different things by design. The >= binds more tightly than the ?:, it lets you do stuff like a > 0 ? "greater than" : "not greater than" Thus the first one is more like if(i >= (true)) { return 0; } else { return 1; { } and the second one is if(i >= ((true) ? 0 : 1) Though I personally like to use extra parens though just remember that true and (true) are no different, regardless of context - those parens are totally redundant..
Sep 17 2019