Wireshark-dev: Re: [Wireshark-dev] Memory corruption on x86_64 / GCC 4.2.3

From: Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 12:05:33 -0700

On Aug 2, 2008, at 5:26 PM, Alexey Neyman wrote:

Small correction: the option to GCC which fixes this problem
is "-fno-tree-vrp",

...which, from the GCC 4.3 documentation, turns off an optimization pass:

	-ftree-vrp
Perform Value Range Propagation on trees. This is similar to the constant propagation pass, but instead of values, ranges of values are propagated. This allows the optimizers to remove unnecessary range checks like array bound checks and null pointer checks. This is enabled by default at -O2 and higher. Null pointer check elimination is only done if -fdelete-null-pointer-checks is enabled.

so, all other things, I'd prefer not to turn that one off.

The documentation's discussion of -fstring-overflow mentions -fwrapv:

	-fwrapv
This option instructs the compiler to assume that signed arithmetic overflow of addition, subtraction and multiplication wraps around using twos-complement representation. This flag enables some optimizations and disables others. This option is enabled by default for the Java front-end, as required by the Java language specification.

We only run on two's-complement platforms, as far as I know (no Univac mainframes run Wireshark, as far as I know), so, unless signed arithmetic overflow causes a trap, addition and subtraction presumably wrap around. Does turning that option on fix this problem?