seekable_format warning with -DNDEBUG: potential uninitialised local variable newOffset used

Open Beginner friendly
#4,756 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
c
Domain
build-system

Research direction

Locate the seekable_format function and inspect the switch around the assert and newOffset use, then reproduce the warning with MSVC /W4 /O2 /DNDEBUG through the CMake build. The work is done when seekable_format and the resulting static library compile without uninitialised-variable warnings under the reported flags.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Describe the bug
When seekable_format is compiled with -DNDEBUG (common for release builds), the assert inside the switch is eliminated. As a result the "unreachable" code from lines 190 onwards become reachable and the compiler correctly determines that in line 193 the variable is used uninitialised triggering a warning. Since compiling with DNDEBUG is a valid way to reduce run-time overhead in release environments, I suggest this use-of-uninitialised-variable should be mitigated without the use of assert(), perhaps by return -1; in the default case below the assert(0);

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Compile seekable_format with -DNDEBUG.

Expected behavior
No warnings are expected during compilation of seekable format or linking of a static library file resulting from such compilation.

Compilation environment:

  • OS: Windows
  • Version 1.5.7, also head of MAIN
  • Compiler MSVC 19.29.30159.0
  • Flags /W4 /O2 /DNDEBUG
  • Build system CMake
Dominant language
C
Stars
27.9k
Forks
2.6k
Avg merge
1d 3h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from facebook/zstd

All issues in facebook/zstd

Similar issues

More C issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.