Re: [boost] [review][constrained_value] Review of Constrained Value Library begins today

Subject: Re: [boost] [review][constrained_value] Review of Constrained Value Library begins today
From: Giovanni Piero Deretta (gpderetta_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-12-09 08:40:43

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Thorsten Ottosen
<thorsten.ottosen_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> Kim Barrett skrev:
>>
>> At 2:23 PM +0100 12/6/08, Robert Kawulak wrote:
>>>
>>> ... maybe the problem
>>> could be somehow solved if we have a function float exact(float) that,
>>> given a
>>> floating point value (that may have greater precision because of caching
>>> in a
>>> register), returns a value that is truncated (has exactly the precision
>>> of
>>> float, not greater).
>>
>> I think that something along the lines of the following will likely work:
>>
>> inline double exact(double x) {
>>    struct { volatile double x; } xx = { x };
>>    return xx.x;
>> }

Please no. Not only it might prevent other optimizations, but is also
completely thread unsafe.

>>
>> The idea is to force the value to make a round trip through a memory
>> location of the "correct" size. The use of volatile should prevent
>> the compiler from optimizing away the trip through memory.
>>
>> If worried about whether a compiler will really do what's needed here,
>> then I think the only other option is inline assembler to produce the
>> equivalent behavior. Looking through the x86 instruction set, I don't
>> see any other way to cause the desired rounding.
>
> For some ABIs I think using class instead of struct will have the desired
> effect of passing the value on the stack. So maybe something like
>

AFAIK usually is the presence of a constructor that is the
discriminant between passing by via stack or via register, not the
struct/class keyword itself...

> template< class T >
> class rounder { ... };
>
> template< class T >
> inline T exact( rounder<T> r )
> { return r.val(); }
>

... and if the call itself is inlined, I doubt that the object is
actually forced to the stack.

-- 
gpd