pmeerw's blog

Mon, 26 Feb 2024

constexpr string initialization fails to compile with _DEBUG

C++ code compiles with release build, fails with debug build (/D_DEBUG); MSVC obviously

Expectation: define _DEBUG (or switching between release and debug build) doesn’t change whether code is accepted; apparently Mircosoft has a different view...

// source code, x.cpp
#include <cstdio>
#include <string>

static constexpr std::string s = “asdf”;

int main() {
printf(“%s\n”, s.c_str());
}
Compile with debug:
cl /std:c++20 /D_DEBUG x.cpp
Microsoft ® C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 19.39.33520 for x64
Copyright © Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

x.cpp
x.cpp(4): error C2131: expression did not evaluate to a constant
x.cpp(4): note: (sub-)object points to memory which was heap allocated during constant evaluation
Compile as release:
cl /std:c++20 x.cpp
Microsoft ® C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 19.39.33520 for x64
Copyright © Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

x.cpp
Microsoft ® Incremental Linker Version 14.39.33520.0
Copyright © Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

/out:x.exe
x.obj

Bonus: when the initializer string “asdf” is longer, e.g. “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasdf” also the release build fails (which is OK)

There's actually a very good and detailed technical explanation.

posted at: 10:00 | path: /programming | permanent link

Wed, 17 Jan 2024

No newline before EOF

Configuring editors to not append a newline at the end (before the end-of-file, EOF):

(see here also)

posted at: 23:13 | path: /programming | permanent link

Mon, 26 Dec 2022

S1144 LED name badge

Got a 11x44 LED badge labelled S1144. It identifies as

usb 1-2: new full-speed USB device number 61 using xhci_hcd
usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0416, idProduct=5020, bcdDevice= 1.00
usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-2: Product: CH546
usb 1-2: Manufacturer: wch.cn
hid-generic 0003:0416:5020.0090: hiddev1,hidraw2: USB HID v1.00 Device [wch.cn CH546] on usb-0000:02:00.0-2/input0
The CH546 is a 8051 MCU. It uses a USB HID interface. There is some Windows software to program it.

Here's what lsusb -v -v -v has to say about it:

Bus 001 Device 062: ID 0416:5020 Winbond Electronics Corp. CH546
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0 
  bDeviceSubClass         0 
  bDeviceProtocol         0 
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x0416 Winbond Electronics Corp.
  idProduct          0x5020 
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1 wch.cn
  iProduct                2 CH546
  iSerial                 0 
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength       0x0029
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          4 wch.cn
    bmAttributes         0xa0
      (Bus Powered)
      Remote Wakeup
    MaxPower               70mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           2
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Device
      bInterfaceSubClass      0 
      bInterfaceProtocol      0 
      iInterface              5 wch.cn
        HID Device Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType        33
          bcdHID               1.00
          bCountryCode            0 Not supported
          bNumDescriptors         1
          bDescriptorType        34 Report
          wDescriptorLength      34
          Report Descriptor: (length is 34)
            Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x00 0xff ] 65280
                            (null)
            Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
                            (null)
            Item(Main  ): Collection, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
                            Application
            Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x02 ] 2
                            (null)
            Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0
            Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x00 0xff ] 65280
            Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x08 ] 8
            Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x40 ] 64
            Item(Main  ): Input, data= [ 0x06 ] 6
                            Data Variable Relative No_Wrap Linear
                            Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield
            Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x02 ] 2
                            (null)
            Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0
            Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x00 0xff ] 65280
            Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x08 ] 8
            Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x40 ] 64
            Item(Main  ): Output, data= [ 0x06 ] 6
                            Data Variable Relative No_Wrap Linear
                            Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield
            Item(Main  ): End Collection, data=none
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x82  EP 2 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               1
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x02  EP 2 OUT
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0040  1x 64 bytes
        bInterval               1
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)

posted at: 21:22 | path: /programming | permanent link

Wed, 19 Oct 2022

xchg eax,eax -> nop?

On x86 (32-bit), a no-operation (nop) can be encoded as a CPU instruction 0x90 (among other choices). 0x90 can also be interpreted as xchg eax,eax.

On x86-64, xchg eax, eax is not a nop, as it clear the upper-half of the rax register; hence, it must be encoded as 0x87 0xc0. xchg rax, rax could be translated into a nop.

radare's rasm2 allows to easily experiment with different assembler engines for x86 (.nz is default):

rasm2 -a x86.nz -b 64 "xchg eax,eax" // .nz .. handmade assembler
87c0
rasm2 -a x86.nz -b 32 "xchg eax,eax"
90
rasm2 -a x86.nasm -b 64 "xchg rax,rax" // using NASM, notice the extra override byte 0x48
4890
rasm2 -a x86.as -b 64 "xchg rax,rax" // using GNU assembler
90

At least the following libraries/tools get this wrong:

As you might have guessed, these are my Hacktoberfest 2022 contributions.

posted at: 12:54 | path: /programming | permanent link

Thu, 26 Nov 2020

QEMU user-mode emulation

qemu can emulate all kind of architectures and processors, including x86 and x86_64, it has presets for a long list of CPUs ([1], 486, pentium, Haswell, etc.)

I've tried this using qemu 4.2.1 on Ubuntu 20.04, latest is 5.1.0.

qemu does full-system emulation AND user-mode emulation. While the former allows to run a wide range of operating systems on any supported architecture [2], the later runs programs for another Linux or BSD target.

       Full-system                     User-mode
+---------------------+         +---------------------+
| Userspace emulation |         | Userspace emulation |
+----------+----------+         +----------+----------+
           |                               |
 +---------+--------+              +-------+-------+
 | Kernel emulation |              | Kernel native |
 +---------+--------+              +-------+-------+
           |                               |
+----------+---------+            +--------+--------+
| Hardware emulation |            | Hardware native |
+--------------------+            +-----------------+

Let's compile the following simple program (hello.c):

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
  printf("hello world %p\n", main);
  return 0;
}
And link statically to be self-contained; qemu can handle dynamically linked executables just fine as well.

To compile and link for 32-bit ARM [3]: arm-linux-gnueabihf-gcc -static -o hello-arm hello.c
For 64-bit x86: gcc -static -o hello-x86_x64 hello.c

Let's check:
$ file hello-arm
hello-arm: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, not stripped
$ file hello-x86_x64
hello-x86_x64: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), statically linked, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, not stripped

On Ubuntu, we need qemu-user [4], and can then execute both binaries:
$ qemu-arm -- ./hello-arm
hello world 0x10425
$ qemu-x86_64 -- ./hello-x86_64
hello world 0x401ce5

qemu translates the input binary to run on the native CPU, also in case the architectures match. It uses internal micro ops (some intermediate representation), these can be observed before and after optimization:
qemu-x86_64 -d op -- ./hello-x86_64
qemu-x86_64 -d op_opt -- ./hello-x86_64

For example:

 mov_i64 tmp0,r13
 mov_i64 tmp1,r13
 and_i64 cc_dst,tmp0,tmp1
 discard cc_src
 discard loc10

Also the input and output assembler code can be seen:
qemu-x86_64 -d in_asm -- ./hello-x86_x64
qemu-x86_64 -d out_asm -- ./hello-x86_x64

[1] qemu -cpu help
[2] arm, m64k, mips, mips64, ppc, sparc, sparc64, etc.
[3] apt install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf
[4] apt install qemu-user
[5] To show log items: qemu-x86_64 -d help

posted at: 23:45 | path: /programming | permanent link

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