Re: [boost] SafeInt code proposal

Subject: Re: [boost] SafeInt code proposal
From: Niels Dekker - address until 2010-10-10 (niels_address_until_2010-10-10_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-21 04:28:41

Omer Katz wrote:
> A friend and I have started working on a SafeInt library which we 
> hope will be included in Boost

I think such a library would be very useful.  But as Ilya Bobir 
mentions, it is very similar to Microsoft's SafeInt, developed by David 
LeBlanc. Did you have a look at his library before?

Ilya Bobir wrote:
> I really doubt that you library will be accepted in its current form. 
> For the following reasons:
[...]
> 4. x86 has hardware support for checking for integer overflows.  It 
> means that the OS may provide some means to check if an overflow has 
> occurred.  Using hardware may be way faster then doing the checks in the 
> software.

Interesting!  How would you use hardware to check int overflow?

> P.S.  Your code seems to be very similar to what is published here:
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972705.aspx

Indeed.  Note that Microsoft's SafeInt will be shipped with MSVC 2010. 
Actually, Visual Studio Beta 1 already has it placed at "C:\Program 
Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\include"

There's also a freely available version of David LeBlanc's SafeInt at 
Microsoft's open source website, www.codeplex.com/SafeInt  BTW, I did 
help a little bit to get it compiling on GCC.  :-)

Kind regards, Niels
-- 
Niels Dekker
http://www.xs4all.nl/~nd/dekkerware
Scientific programmer at LKEB, Leiden University Medical Center