[fpc-devel] Unexpected behaviour with intermediate results

[J. Gareth Moreton]

 Hence why I wish to delegate this to someone more senior to decide if this
is a bug or a feature.  Seems that logic has more than one path. 
Mathematically, yes, shl 8 and shr 8 should cancel out completely and be a
null operation.
 Gareth

 On Tue 12/06/18 12:42 , Giuliano Colla giuliano.colla at fastwebnet.it sent:
 Il 12/06/2018 02:07, J. Gareth Moreton ha scritto: 
 > Someone pointed out that if you perform "(x shl 8) shr 8", where x is 
 > of type Word, the result is always x, even though logic dictates that 
 > the upper 8 bits should be shifted out and hence the result actually 
 > be equal to "x and $FF". 

 IMHO logic dictates that (x shl 8) shr 8 should give x, because the shr 
 cancels the effect of shl, and that a further compiler optimization 
 might simply suppress the code at all. Register size when performing a 
 calculation is not dictated by logic, but by physical constraints, which 
 have nothing to do with logic. 

 If the programmer wishes to mask out some bits he should explicitly use 
 an *and* instruction, making the code both more readable and more 
 portable. Generating a less efficient code, with and instructions added 
 with the sole purpose of supporting the improper usage of a shl 
 instruction wouldn't be very smart. 

 I'm in favour of a compiler which generates the most efficient code, and 
 leaves to the programmer the responsibility to mask unwanted bits. 

 Just my 2 cents. 

 Giuliano 

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