C Language Aliasing and effective type restrict qualification
Example
If we have two pointer arguments of the same type, the compiler can't make any assumption and will always have to assume that the change to *e may change *f:
void fun(float* e, float* f) {
float a = *f
*e = 22;
float b = *f;
print("is %g equal to %g?\n", a, b);
}
float fval = 4;
float eval = 77;
fun(&eval, &fval);
all goes well and something like
is 4 equal to 4?
is printed. If we pass the same pointer, the program will still do the right thing and print
is 4 equal to 22?
This can turn out to be inefficient, if we know by some outside information that e and f will never point to the same data object. We can reflect that knowledge by adding restrict qualifiers to the pointer parameters:
void fan(float*restrict e, float*restrict f) {
float a = *f
*e = 22;
float b = *f;
print("is %g equal to %g?\n", a, b);
}
Then the compiler may always suppose that e and f point to different objects.
