Issue 0477: nan should take a string argument

This issue has been automatically converted from the original issue lists and some formatting may not have been preserved.

Authors: WG14, Martin Sebor
Date: 2015-08-27
Reference document: N1957
Submitted against: C11 / C17
Status: Fixed
Fixed in: C17
Converted from: n2396.htm

Summary

The Description for the nan(const char *tagp) function reads as follows:

The call nan("n-char-sequence") is equivalent to strtod("NAN(n-char-sequence)", (char**) NULL); the call nan("") is equivalent to strtod("NAN()", (char**) NULL). If tagp does not point to an n-char sequence or an empty string, the call is equivalent to strtod("NAN", (char**) NULL).

An n-char sequence is a string of an implementation-defined form.

§7.1.4, Use of library functions, requires that arguments to library functions must have valid values. Specifically, pointers must not be null or point outside the address space of the program. In addition, arguments described as arrays (including strings) must be such that all address computations and accesses to objects that would be valid if the pointer argument did point to the first element of such an array are in fact valid.

Since tagp argument is not required to point to a string or array, only the first condition in §7.1.4 applies: it must not point outside the address space of the program or be null.

Therefore, in the snippet below, since tagp is a valid pointer that does not point to an n-char-sequence or the empty string, the nan call is valid and required to be be equivalent to strtod("NAN", (char**) NULL).

    char c = '1';   // not a n-char-sequence (no terminating NUL)
    char *tagp = &c;
    double x = nan (tagp);

But for an implementation that recognizes n-char-sequences of length greater than 1 the requirement to determine whether tagp points to one is impossible to implement since to do so nan would have to attempt to read past the end of c.

It seems obvious that this is not intended and that the standard text is simply missing a requirement that the tagp argument point to a string.

Suggested Technical Corrigendum

The solution is to require the argument to the nan family of functions to be a pointer to a string, analogously to all other library functions that operate on strings.

Change §7.12.11.2 as follows:

The nan, nanf, and nanl functions convert the string pointed to by tagp according to the following rules. The call nan("n-char-sequence") is equivalent to strtod("NAN(n-char-sequence)", (char**) NULL); the call nan("") is equivalent to strtod("NAN()", (char**) NULL). If tagp does not point to an n-char sequence or an empty string, the call is equivalent to strtod("NAN", (char**) NULL).

Comment from WG14 on 2017-11-03:

Oct 2015 meeting

Committee Discussion

• The committee agrees with the author and accepts his Suggested Technical Corrigendum as the committee‘s Proposed Technical Corrigendum.
• This issue is likely a defect in the recently published ISO/IEC TS 18661 Floating Point extensions for C - Part 1, and the author is solicited to submit a DR against FPE-1 to this committee.

Proposed Technical Corrigendum

To §7.12.11.2 insert as first sentence:

The nan, nanf, and nanl functions convert the string pointed to by tagp according to the following rules. The call nan("n-char-sequence") is equivalent ...