The xsize_t helper aims to safely convert an off_t to a size_t, erroring out when a file offset is too large to fit into a memory address. It does this by using two casts: size_t size = (size_t) len; if (len != (off_t) size) ... error out ... On a platform with sizeof(size_t) < sizeof(off_t), this check is safe and correct. The first cast truncates to a size_t by finding the remainder modulo SIZE_MAX+1 (see C99 section 6.3.1.3 Signed and unsigned integers) and the second promotes to an off_t, meaning the result is true if and only if len is representable as a size_t. On other platforms, this two-casts strategy still works well (always succeeds) for len >= 0. But for len < 0, when the first cast succeeds and produces SIZE_MAX + 1 + len, the resulting value is too large to be represented as an off_t, so the second cast produces implementation defined behavior. In practice, it is likely to produce a result of true despite len not being representable as size_t. Simplify by replacing with a more straightforward check: compare len to the relevant bounds and then cast it. (To avoid a -Wsign-compare warning, after checking that len >= 0, we explicitly convert to a sufficiently-large unsigned type before comparing to SIZE_MAX.) In practice, this is not likely to come up since typical callers use nonnegative len. Still, it's helpful to handle this case to make the behavior easy to reason about. Historical note: the original bounds-checking in 46be82dfd0 (xsize_t: check whether we lose bits, 2010-07-28) did not produce this implementation-defined behavior, though it still did not handle negative offsets. It was not until 73560c793a (git-compat-util.h: xsize_t() - avoid -Wsign-compare warnings, 2017-09-21) introduced the double cast that the implementation-defined behavior was triggered. Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> --- Junio C Hamano wrote: > Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> writes: >> - if (len != (off_t) size) >> + if (len < 0 || len > SIZE_MAX) >> die("Cannot handle files this big"); > > OK, so negative offset or offset that cannot be represented as size_t > are rejected. That is much easier to read than the original ;-) > > SIZE_MAX is associated with size_t so it presumably is an unsigned > constant; would it again trigger a sign-compare warning? Alas, on platforms with sizeof(size_t) == sizeof(off_t), I believe it does: $ gcc --version gcc (Debian 10.2.1-6+build2) 10.2.1 20210110 Copyright (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. $ cat sign-compare-test.c #define X (1U) extern int signed_int(); int main(void) { int v = signed_int(); return v < 0 || v > X; } $ gcc -c -Wall -W -Wsign-compare sign-compare-test.c sign-compare-test.c: In function ‘main’: sign-compare-test.c:8:21: warning: comparison of integer expressions of different signedness: ‘int’ and ‘unsigned int’ [-Wsign-compare] 8 | return v < 0 || v > X; | ^ That can be worked around by reintroducing a cast, to an unsigned type this time, like this. Thanks, Jonathan git-compat-util.h | 6 ++---- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/git-compat-util.h b/git-compat-util.h index a508dbe5a3..fb6e9af76b 100644 --- a/git-compat-util.h +++ b/git-compat-util.h @@ -986,11 +986,9 @@ static inline char *xstrdup_or_null(const char *str) static inline size_t xsize_t(off_t len) { - size_t size = (size_t) len; - - if (len != (off_t) size) + if (len < 0 || (uintmax_t) len > SIZE_MAX) die("Cannot handle files this big"); - return size; + return (size_t) len; } __attribute__((format (printf, 3, 4))) -- 2.31.1.818.g46aad6cb9e