Obscure C code (was Re: Excessive optimization)

[Brent Hilpert]

On 2010 Dec 7, at 2:33 AM, Christian Corti wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Dec 2010, Brent Hilpert wrote:
>>>> It was thus said that the Great Philip Pemberton once stated:
>>> [...]
>>>> > However: the compiler would still be correct to use the value 123
>>>> > instead of 1, thus that code may not work... So it's compiler
>>> !!-1   = !(!-1)   = !(0)   = 123
>>> !!123  = !(!123)  = !(0)   = 123
>>> !!0    = !(!0)    = !(123) = 0
>>> Whether that's correct behaviour or not was not the question.
>>
>> Lame. It was the question.
>
> No, it was stated by Sean Conner that if a (admittedly broken) 
> compiler used a value of 123 for !0, you could circumvent this 
> behaviour with a double negation, i.e. !!(!0) would produce a 1.
>
> That's what he said:
>>  Nope.  !b will turn 0 to 1, and anything not 0 to 0.
>>
>>        !!-1  = !(!-1)  = !(0) = 1
>>        !!123 = !(!123) = !(0) = 1
>>        !!0   = !(!0)   = !(1) = 0
>
> which is clearly not the case if you assume a broken compiler that 
> doesn't evaluate !(0) to 1. I think I have seen such a compiler (maybe 
> a
> cheap PD compiler on the Amiga, but I'm not sure), so it may well be 
> compiler dependent (although not correct and I've never questioned 
> that).
>
> Is it possible that we are talking past each other?

In the same sense that anything is possible if a compiler can do 
anything it wants regardless of the language definition, I guess it is.

Agreed that double negation is not a fix to the error of said broken 
compiler, but I wasn't sure that was Sean's point in suggesting double 
negation.

You nonetheless agreed with Phil's assertion that it was 
compiler-dependant behaviour.