shafik

What is the Strict Aliasing Rule and Why do we care?

(OR Type Punning, Undefined Behavior and Alignment, Oh My!)

What is strict aliasing? First we will describe what is aliasing and then we can learn what being strict about it means.

In C and C++ aliasing has to do with what expression types we are allowed to access stored values through. In both C and C++ the standard specifies which expression types are allowed to alias which types. The compiler and optimizer are allowed to assume we follow the aliasing rules strictly, hence the term strict aliasing rule. If we attempt to access a value using a type not allowed it is classified as undefined behavior(UB). Once we have undefined behavior all bets are off, the results of our program are no longer reliable.

Unfortunately with strict aliasing violations, we will often obtain the results we expect, leaving the possibility the a future version of a compiler with a new optimization will break code we th

rain1024

PdfLatex is a tool that converts Latex sources into PDF. This is specifically very important for researchers, as they use it to publish their findings. It could be installed very easily using Linux terminal, though this seems an annoying task on Windows. Installation commands are given below.

• Install the TexLive base

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base

• Also install the recommended and extra fonts to avoid running into the error [1], when trying to use pdflatex on latex files with more fonts.