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  4. Let's "switch" to Something Else

Let's "switch" to Something Else

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  • B BobJanova

    I don't think it would, as it's doing the + and shift manually. If it was just switch(recv[0]) then it would be endian vulnerable. In the absence of language or framework features that allow you to switch on a string, I have no problem with this.

    J Offline
    J Offline
    jibalt
    wrote on last edited by
    #11

    You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

    #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

    verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

    switch (verb)
    {
    case VB('C','M','D'):
    ...

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    • G Gary Wheeler

      That's how you handle tags in ICC profiles, for example. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

      Tom Delany wrote:

      WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated.

      Still one of my favorite sigs on CP.

      Software Zen: delete this;

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      jibalt
      wrote on last edited by
      #12

      No endian-sensitive code (which includes all multibyte chars) is "perfectly sensible".

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      • J jibalt

        No endian-sensitive code (which includes all multibyte chars) is "perfectly sensible".

        G Offline
        G Offline
        Gary Wheeler
        wrote on last edited by
        #13

        'Sensibility' of a particular approach always depends upon the problem being solved. Making code endian-insensitive is necessary only if you plan on porting it between different endian environments.

        Software Zen: delete this;

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        • J jibalt

          You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

          #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

          verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

          switch (verb)
          {
          case VB('C','M','D'):
          ...

          B Offline
          B Offline
          BobJanova
          wrote on last edited by
          #14

          Oh really? So in that case doing switch(*recv) should be safe.

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          • B BobJanova

            Oh really? So in that case doing switch(*recv) should be safe.

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            J Offline
            jibalt
            wrote on last edited by
            #15

            I have no idea which of the things I wrote are the subject of your "oh really", but all of them are correct. As for the rest, it's a non sequitur. Both *recv and multi-char literals are endian-sensitive, so you appear to have committed a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent ... a rather basic failure of logic. But if you want to go around switching on 4-char literals thinking that it's portable, be my guest ... just don't do it in any code that might affect my life.

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            • T Tom Delany

              It's in a thread where it's listening for something from a TCPIP connection (sort of a command channel). It's low-volume, and as such, I don't think the "cleverness" is warranted. And no, it's not commented at all. It's not that I don't understand what he was doing. I just think he was being too clever for his own good. And in the (unlikely?) event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

              WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

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              N Offline
              NAANsoft
              wrote on last edited by
              #16

              A wee bit of commmenting would be nice, but other than that I cannot see a problem here. As for porting to big-endian system: First of all, that will never happen. Secondly, there will be more places to fix if it did happen. Thirdly, the code is platform-restricted anyway (to Windows), so there is not a problem...:cool:

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              • T Tom Delany

                C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                BYTE recv\[64\];
                
                DWORD   verb;
                ...
                verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                
                switch (verb)
                {
                case 'CMD ':
                   ...
                   break;
                
                case 'MON ':
                   ...
                   break;
                
                case 'END ':
                   ...
                   break;
                
                case 'EXT ':
                   ...
                   break;
                
                default:
                    ...
                    break;
                }
                

                WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

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                ClockMeister
                wrote on last edited by
                #17

                ?? what's wrong with it?

                1 Reply Last reply
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                • J jibalt

                  You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                  #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

                  verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

                  switch (verb)
                  {
                  case VB('C','M','D'):
                  ...

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                  R Offline
                  Rob Grainger
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #18

                  You're not proposing he should use VB are you?

                  1 Reply Last reply
                  0
                  • N NAANsoft

                    A wee bit of commmenting would be nice, but other than that I cannot see a problem here. As for porting to big-endian system: First of all, that will never happen. Secondly, there will be more places to fix if it did happen. Thirdly, the code is platform-restricted anyway (to Windows), so there is not a problem...:cool:

                    R Offline
                    R Offline
                    Rob Grainger
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #19

                    Why is that code platform-restricted to Windows? I've seen DWORDs on many platforms, so there's really nothing here to suggest that.

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                    0
                    • R Rob Grainger

                      Why is that code platform-restricted to Windows? I've seen DWORDs on many platforms, so there's really nothing here to suggest that.

                      N Offline
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                      NAANsoft
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #20

                      Ah, but it was Windows that started it. Nyah, nyah... ;P As for the two other points, they are still valid...

                      1 Reply Last reply
                      0
                      • T Tom Delany

                        C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                        BYTE recv\[64\];
                        
                        DWORD   verb;
                        ...
                        verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                        
                        switch (verb)
                        {
                        case 'CMD ':
                           ...
                           break;
                        
                        case 'MON ':
                           ...
                           break;
                        
                        case 'END ':
                           ...
                           break;
                        
                        case 'EXT ':
                           ...
                           break;
                        
                        default:
                            ...
                            break;
                        }
                        

                        WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                        R Offline
                        R Offline
                        RafagaX
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #21

                        I suppose he didn't liked If - else- ifs...

                        CEO at: - Rafaga Systems - Para Facturas - Modern Components for the moment...

                        1 Reply Last reply
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                        • T Tom Delany

                          C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                          BYTE recv\[64\];
                          
                          DWORD   verb;
                          ...
                          verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                          
                          switch (verb)
                          {
                          case 'CMD ':
                             ...
                             break;
                          
                          case 'MON ':
                             ...
                             break;
                          
                          case 'END ':
                             ...
                             break;
                          
                          case 'EXT ':
                             ...
                             break;
                          
                          default:
                              ...
                              break;
                          }
                          

                          WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                          M Offline
                          M Offline
                          Member_5893260
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #22

                          It's sort of both... it'd be properly brilliant if the "verb =" line were commented...

                          1 Reply Last reply
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                          • T Tom Delany

                            It's in a thread where it's listening for something from a TCPIP connection (sort of a command channel). It's low-volume, and as such, I don't think the "cleverness" is warranted. And no, it's not commented at all. It's not that I don't understand what he was doing. I just think he was being too clever for his own good. And in the (unlikely?) event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

                            WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                            J Offline
                            J Offline
                            jschell
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #23

                            Tom Delany wrote:

                            event that the code is ever ported to a big-endian system, it would be completely broken.

                            No it wouldn't. The code POSTED would work regardless of that. As mentioned it is a TCP stream so it sequential. The switch statement is using ascii. The only way endianess would matter would be if the stream started to use a different character set. And if it did that it would fail if 1. The character system was not using a 8 bit lower representation of that matched ascii (UTF8 does where UTF16 does not.) 2. AND if the protocol changed. And certainly if item 2 is true then all sorts of problems could result. Such as the rest of the code, following the switch, failing as well.

                            1 Reply Last reply
                            0
                            • J jibalt

                              You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive. To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                              #define VB(a,b,c) (((((a)<<8)+(b))<<8)+(c))

                              verb = VB(upper[curr->recv[0]], upper[curr->recv[1]], upper[curr->recv[2]]);

                              switch (verb)
                              {
                              case VB('C','M','D'):
                              ...

                              J Offline
                              J Offline
                              jschell
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #24

                              jibalt wrote:

                              You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive.
                               
                              To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                              That however ignores the point that the code was written to support a specific protocol over TCP. If the character set of the protocol changed then that would be just one thing that would likely break.

                              J 1 Reply Last reply
                              0
                              • T Tom Delany

                                C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                                BYTE recv\[64\];
                                
                                DWORD   verb;
                                ...
                                verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                                
                                switch (verb)
                                {
                                case 'CMD ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                case 'MON ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                case 'END ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                case 'EXT ':
                                   ...
                                   break;
                                
                                default:
                                    ...
                                    break;
                                }
                                

                                WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                                J Offline
                                J Offline
                                jschell
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #25

                                Tom Delany wrote:

                                This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. What is the fourth character of the protocol?

                                Tom Delany wrote:

                                I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful":

                                How would you refactor it?

                                1 Reply Last reply
                                0
                                • J jibalt

                                  I have no idea which of the things I wrote are the subject of your "oh really", but all of them are correct. As for the rest, it's a non sequitur. Both *recv and multi-char literals are endian-sensitive, so you appear to have committed a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent ... a rather basic failure of logic. But if you want to go around switching on 4-char literals thinking that it's portable, be my guest ... just don't do it in any code that might affect my life.

                                  B Offline
                                  B Offline
                                  BobJanova
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #26

                                  You can use big words all you like, but either 'CMD ' is endian sensitive, i.e. it is the byte stream 'C', 'M', 'D', ' ' on one system and ' ', 'D', 'M', 'C' on another, or it isn't, i.e. it's always 'C', 'M', 'D', ' ' and therefore maps to a different integer. In the first case, *recv won't be correct because the byte stream you're checking for is always the same, but the code in the original example would be, because it manually makes the integer in the big-endian manner, and that will be the value that the constant has if it switches the byte order. And if not, *recv will be correct, even if the integer interpretation of that value will be different. There is one good argument you could have deployed, which is that the standard doesn't actually define whether a multi character constant refers to byte order or integer value. But if it has a consistent meaning in real world compilers, that doesn't really matter.

                                  J 1 Reply Last reply
                                  0
                                  • T Tom Delany

                                    C++ code. This is either brilliant, or just bloody awful. I'm coming down on the side of "bloody awful": recv in the curr structure below is declared as:

                                    BYTE recv\[64\];
                                    
                                    DWORD   verb;
                                    ...
                                    verb = (upper\[curr->recv\[0\]\] << 24) + (upper\[curr->recv\[1\]\] << 16) + (upper\[curr->recv\[2\]\] << 8) + 0x20;
                                    
                                    switch (verb)
                                    {
                                    case 'CMD ':
                                       ...
                                       break;
                                    
                                    case 'MON ':
                                       ...
                                       break;
                                    
                                    case 'END ':
                                       ...
                                       break;
                                    
                                    case 'EXT ':
                                       ...
                                       break;
                                    
                                    default:
                                        ...
                                        break;
                                    }
                                    

                                    WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.

                                    M Offline
                                    M Offline
                                    Martin0815
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #27

                                    In my eyes it is ugly, but one of the easies way to compare strings (up to 8 bytes) in a most efficient way. If it's needed and documented ... ok. I recently saw a very strange way to copy an object in C++:

                                    1. the class defines all its data member attributes within 64 Byte

                                    2. the data member attributes are ordered to use alignment efficently

                                    3. copying the class is done this way (or similar)

                                      C64bitClass src, dst;

                                      // cast the pointer to the source/destination object to __int64 pointers
                                      __int64 *pnSrc = static_cast<__int64*>(&src);
                                      __int64 *pnDst = static_cast<__int64*>(&dst);

                                      // copy the first 64bit of the object - the data of the object
                                      *pnDst = *pnSrc;

                                    This really ugly, isn't it!

                                    1 Reply Last reply
                                    0
                                    • B BobJanova

                                      You can use big words all you like, but either 'CMD ' is endian sensitive, i.e. it is the byte stream 'C', 'M', 'D', ' ' on one system and ' ', 'D', 'M', 'C' on another, or it isn't, i.e. it's always 'C', 'M', 'D', ' ' and therefore maps to a different integer. In the first case, *recv won't be correct because the byte stream you're checking for is always the same, but the code in the original example would be, because it manually makes the integer in the big-endian manner, and that will be the value that the constant has if it switches the byte order. And if not, *recv will be correct, even if the integer interpretation of that value will be different. There is one good argument you could have deployed, which is that the standard doesn't actually define whether a multi character constant refers to byte order or integer value. But if it has a consistent meaning in real world compilers, that doesn't really matter.

                                      J Offline
                                      J Offline
                                      jibalt
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #28

                                      "You can use big words all you like" Try "git". That's a little word.

                                      1 Reply Last reply
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                                      • J jschell

                                        jibalt wrote:

                                        You've missed the point ... all multibyte char literals are endian-sensitive.
                                         
                                        To make it endian-insensitive, it should be

                                        That however ignores the point that the code was written to support a specific protocol over TCP. If the character set of the protocol changed then that would be just one thing that would likely break.

                                        J Offline
                                        J Offline
                                        jibalt
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #29

                                        No, I did not ignore your irrelevant point.

                                        J 1 Reply Last reply
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                                        • J jibalt

                                          No, I did not ignore your irrelevant point.

                                          J Offline
                                          J Offline
                                          jschell
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #30

                                          jibalt wrote:

                                          No, I did not ignore your irrelevant point.

                                          Your comments are only relevent if the character set changes - and thus the protocol changed. Thus your comment, in terms of the original question, is irrelevant. And I seriously doubt it would ever be relevant because it presumes that the protocol is compiler dependent. Even if the protocol did specially use a multi-byte character set which varied by OS then then the correct thing for the protocol to do is send a precursor to determine the ordering. Your code presumes and ordering and ignores the possibility that the other end is running on a different OS.

                                          J 1 Reply Last reply
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