Re: Cleanup for cryptographic algorithms vs. compiler optimizations

Ulrich Spörlein <uqs_at_spoerlein.net> writes:
> optimizing compilers have a tendency to remove assignments that have
> no side effects. The code in sys/crypto/sha2/sha2.c is doing a lot of
> zeroing variables, which is however optimized away.  [...]  Is there a
> canonical way to zero those variables and should we use them (memset
> perhaps? what are the performance implications?)

If you stick these variables in a struct, you can memset the struct to
zero them; if there are many of them, it may be faster than zeroing them
individually.

Alternatively, you can use something like this:

#define FORCE_ASSIGN(type, var, value) \
        *(volatile type *)&(var) = (value)

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des_at_des.no