Page 39 - C-Language

int* b = a.i;
*b = 2;

_Thread_local bufType a = { .c = { 0 } };
int* b = a.i;
*b = 3;
}

Here, the union ensures that the compiler knows from the start that the buffer could be accessed
through different views. This also has the advantage that now the buffer has a "view" a.i that
already is of type int and no pointer conversion is needed.

Effective type

The effective type of a data object is the last type information that was associated with it, if any.

// a normal variable, effective type uint32_t, and this type never changes
uint32_t a = 0.0;

// effective type of *pa is uint32_t, too, simply
// because *pa is the object a
uint32_t* pa = &a;

// the object pointed to by q has no effective type, yet
void* q = malloc(sizeof uint32_t);
// the object pointed to by q still has no effective type,
// because nobody has written to it
uint32_t* qb = q;
// *qb now has effective type uint32_t because a uint32_t value was written
*qb = 37;

// the object pointed to by r has no effective type, yet, although
// it is initialized
void* r = calloc(1, sizeof uint32_t);
// the object pointed to by r still has no effective type,
// because nobody has written to or read from it
uint32_t* rc = r;
// *rc now has effective type uint32_t because a value is read
// from it with that type. The read operation is valid because we used calloc.
// Now the object pointed to by r (which is the same as *rc) has
// gained an effective type, although we didn't change its value.
uint32_t c = *rc;

// the object pointed to by s has no effective type, yet.
void* s = malloc(sizeof uint32_t);
// the object pointed to by s now has effective type uint32_t
// because an uint32_t value is copied into it.
memcpy(s, r, sizeof uint32_t);

Observe that for the latter, it was not necessary that we even have an uint32_t* pointer to that
object. The fact that we have copied another uint32_t object is sufficient.

Violating the strict aliasing rules

In the following code let us assume for simplicity that float and uint32_t have the same size.

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