Comment by DSMan195276 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DSMan195276 | Hacker News Reader

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I would agree, if you take out the __declspec((dllimport) then it's just a 'static const restrict volatile long long int * ', which has lots of qualifications but isn't really much more then just a pointer to a `long long`. The qualifiers make it a bit harder to reason about, but that's also why people rarely use `restrict` and `volatile` in the first place.

I could be wrong but I think the above poster hasn't actually written tons of C, or else they would have picked a much more complicated example. If you throw a bunch of arrays, pointers, and function pointers in it quickly gets out of hand, like this:

    int (* const(*foo)(int (*)(int, int))[5])(void);

That thing defines 'foo', which is a pointer to a function who's first argument is a pointer to a function return a int and taking two ints as arguments, and returns a pointer to an array of 5 const function pointers which take no arguments and return an int.

Thankfully, you rarely run into something like that in the wild. And if you `typedef` the function pointers (Which is a pretty common now) it becomes tons easier to read.

> That thing defines 'foo', which is a pointer to a function who's first argument is a pointer to a function return a int and taking two ints as arguments, and returns a pointer to an array of 5 const function pointers which take no arguments and return an int.

I find this much easier to understand than something with different keywords and qualifiers. Function pointers follow some simple rules to read, but can you be sure of what `volatile` implies ?

> I find this much easier to understand than something with different keywords and qualifiers. Function pointers follow some simple rules to read, but can you be sure of what `volatile` implies ?

Hmm, I suppose we just disagree then, which is fine. Things like `restrict` and `volatile` don't really bother me because:

1. The spots where people actually need to use them are very rare (`restrict` does have uses, but almost nobody uses it commonly. `volatile` has pretty much no correct uses outside of accessing registers in low-level code).

2. It's still just a pointer to a long long. I would need to look-up what __declspec((dllimport)) does, and I'd be highly suspicious of the use of `restrict` and `volatile` if it was not explained, but I still generally know what it is and how it can be used. Whereas with the example I gave, without staring for a long time or throwing it into a parser I can hardly tell what the type even is, let alone wrap my head around how it will be used.

>`volatile` has pretty much no correct uses outside of accessing registers in low-level code

Sorry, but what are you guys on about? You use "volatile" if you don't want the compiler to produce code that caches a variable. You use it all the time in embedded systems, or when writing multi-threaded code, etc. The usage of "volatile" is very clear, and should be well understood. "restrict" isn't used much because it's a c99 standard first of all, and second of all, it's like "inline"; it might make a difference, might not, and not a lot of people are in a situation where they have to shave off cycles.

> You use "volatile" if you don't want the compiler to produce code that caches a variable. You use it all the time in embedded systems, or when writing multi-threaded code, etc.

Thanks for providing a very nice exhibit of the confusion around this. Volatile is 99% useless for multithreading code (unless on MSVC which has a peculiar interpretation of the standard). See https://stackoverflow.com/a/4558031/1495627

It absolutely is not useless. You're the one confused. I never claimed it's a synchronization construct, or that it magically makes your code thread-safe.

No amount of fences or mutexes is going to help you if threads are operating on their own version of a variable that got cached in a register, or optimised away. You need to understand volatile to write correct multi-threaded code.

That StackOverflow answer is bogus, along with all the other comments. It's just a rant that, albeit correct, is barely related to the question asked, and it's a clear example why you shouldn't treat StackOverflow as more than an unreliable help forum. The guy asked about whether you should make variables shared inside of a critical section volatile. The answer is "yes, to prevent threads from working on stale data".

> No amount of fences or mutexes is going to help you if threads are operating on their own version of a variable that got cached in a register, or optimised away. You need to understand volatile to write correct multi-threaded code.

Any properly written Mutex or similar implementation is going to act as a full memory barrier and compiler barrier, meaning variables will already not be cached across lock/unlock. And if you're not properly taking your locks before accessing your variables, `volatile` is not going to save you. The fact is, if you're using a lock to protect a variable, marking it `volatile` gains you nothing and just slows your code down.

> "yes, to prevent threads from working on stale data".

`volatile` absolutely does not guarantee a variable doesn't contain 'stale' data. That's the entire reason you need memory barriers in the first place. Even through the compiler will read a `volatile` variable from memory every time, that memory may still have a stale value in the CPU cache, which `volatile` will do nothing to prevent. Only proper use of memory barriers ensures everyone is working on the same thing, which `volatile` does not do.

> And if you're not properly taking your locks before accessing your variables, `volatile` is not going to save you.

Yes, it will! Just because you’re accessing shared variables doesn’t mean you need locks. This is what volatile is for!

You’re blindly hoping the compiler will do the right thing for you, anyway. You must have little-to-no experience writing multi-theaded code in production, let alone anything more advanced that doesn’t rely on locks.

Nobody’s arguing that volatile somehow bypasses the cache. When it comes to multithreading, that doesn’t matter though, because the whole process works with the cache, and the CPU keeps core caches synchronized. Memory barriers do nothing here.

Seriously, you’re arguing rubbish.

> Even through the compiler will read a `volatile` variable from memory every time, that memory may still have a stale value in the CPU cache, which `volatile` will do nothing to prevent

FWIW, it doesn't even do this, it's just a compiler-level annotation:

  volatile int x = 0;
  int foo() {
    // read
    int ret = x;
    (void)x;

    // write
    x = 0;
    x = 1;

    return ret;
  }

The 'volatile' ensures that that code results in two reads and two writes. Removing it allows the compiler to optimise down to the equivalent of 'int ret = x; x = 1; return ret;', but both with and without use the exact same read/write instructions (i.e. have the same interaction with the cache): mov on x86 and ldr/str on ARM.

Nobody's arguing that volatile has anything to do with CPU cache, or barriers, or locks, or any other nonsense! volatile is there to ensure that the compiler generates code that accesses the variable directly each time, which is necessary to write correct multi-threaded code. If you don't use volatile, and your code still works, then either the compiler's smarter than you, or you got lucky. End of story. The level of misunderstanding you guys are showing on the matter is beyond comical.

volatile's one of the simplest modifiers to understand if you care to actually learn the language. It has a clear, and well-defined purpouse, and i have no idea how you can spend so much time, and energy arguing that that's not the case.

You do use it on embedded systems, hence my note about using it when accessing things like memory-mapped devices in low-level code (depending on what you're doing). However `volatile` is not at all correct for multi-threaded code and that's a very common misconception. It's really not correct for basically anything except for embedded systems.

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