Violating of strict-aliasing in C, even without any casting?

Question

How can *i and u.i print different numbers in this code, even though i is defined as int *i = &u.i;? I can only assuming

Answer 1

Looks like this is a result of the optimizer doing its magic.

With -O0, both lines print 100 as expected (assuming little-endian). With -O2, there is some reordering going on.

gdb gives the following output:

(gdb) start
Temporary breakpoint 1 at 0x4004a0: file /tmp/x1.c, line 14.
Starting program: /tmp/x1
warning: no loadable sections found in added symbol-file system-supplied DSO at 0x2aaaaaaab000

Temporary breakpoint 1, main () at /tmp/x1.c:14
14      {
(gdb) step
15          *i  = 2;
(gdb)
18          printf(" *i = %d\n",  *i); // prints 2
(gdb)
15          *i  = 2;
(gdb)
16          *s  = 100;
(gdb)
18          printf(" *i = %d\n",  *i); // prints 2
(gdb)
 *i = 2
19          printf("u.i = %d\n", u.i); // prints 100
(gdb)
u.i = 100
22      }
(gdb)
0x0000003fa441d9f4 in __libc_start_main () from /lib64/libc.so.6
(gdb)

The reason this happens, as others have stated, is because it is undefined behavior to access a variable of one type through a pointer to another type even if the variable in question is part of a union. So the optimizer is free to do as it wishes in this case.

The variable of the other type can only be read directly via a union which guarantees well defined behavior.

What's curious is that even with -Wstrict-aliasing=2, gcc (as of 4.8.4) doesn't complain about this code.