Re: fix memcpy() overlap

Tom Lane wrote:
> Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone.bigpanda.com> writes:
> > On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Tom Lane wrote:
> >> This isn't a bug, and I see no reason to clutter the code just to shut
> >> up valgrind.
>
> > Isn't memcpy on overlapping (even entirely overlapping) buffers undefined
> > behavior unless the count is 0?
>
> The reason that the spec describes overlapped memcpy as undefined is
> that it does not want to restrict which direction the copy occurs in
> (proceeding from lower to higher memory addresses or vice versa).
> memmove is constrained to do the copy in the direction that will avoid
> failure when the source and destination partially overlap.  But memcpy
> is expected to do whichever is fastest on the particular architecture,
> without concern for possible overlap.  (Offhand I've never heard of a
> machine where memcpy doesn't work lower-to-higher, but maybe there is
> one.)
>
> However, when the source and destination buffers are the same, it does
> not matter which direction you copy in; you are picking up and putting
> down the same bytes at the same addresses no matter what order you
> process the bytes in.  There is no implementation in existence that will
> produce an unwanted result.
>
> If you want to argue about dependencies on implementation details that
> are theoretically undefined according to the ANSI C spec, we have tons
> more beyond this one.  F'r instance, depending on twos-complement
> arithmetic is illegal per spec also ...

Isn't memmove() for overlaping regions?  That's what my BSD manual page
says.

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