Miri checks ptr.read() but not dereferencing a pointer (*ptr)

[elichai]

Hi,
miri complains on this:

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        let a = [1u8,2,3];
        let b = &a[0] as *const u8;
        println!("{}", b.add(1).read());
    }
}

https://play.rust-lang.org/?gist=5af194a447ac5e0d38796c809e3a0e6f
but not on this:

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        let a = [1u8,2,3];
        let b = &a[0] as *const u8;
        println!("{}", *b.add(1));
    }
}

https://play.rust-lang.org/?gist=6b7d13c8b77d8e14e06d9133a19e992f

[RalfJung]

I just tried on the playground, and I do get an error for the second example as well:

error: Undefined Behavior: trying to reborrow for SharedReadOnly, but parent tag <untagged> does not have an appropriate item in the borrow stack
 --> src/main.rs:5:24
  |
5 |         println!("{}", *b.add(1));
  |                        ^^^^^^^^^ trying to reborrow for SharedReadOnly, but parent tag <untagged> does not have an appropriate item in the borrow stack
  |
  = help: this indicates a potential bug in the program: it performed an invalid operation, but the rules it violated are still experimental
  = help: see https://github.com/rust-lang/unsafe-code-guidelines/blob/master/wip/stacked-borrows.md for further information

[elichai]

Ha, you're right, this is weird.
This on the other hand doesn't give an error:

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        let a = [1u8, 2, 3];
        let b = &a[0] as *const u8;
        if !a.is_empty() {
            println!("{}", *b.add(1));
        }
    }
}

[RalfJung]

But neither does this:

fn main() {
    unsafe {
        let a = [1u8, 2, 3];
        let b = &a[0] as *const u8;
        if !a.is_empty() {
            println!("{}", b.add(1).read());
        }
    }
}

[RalfJung]

This has nothing to do with deref vs read. This is caused by is_empty creating a raw pointer and Stacked Borrows not tracking raw pointers in detail -- so it "confuses" the raw pointer created there with b. That is currently expected behavior, though I would like to do more precise tracking of raw pointers eventually (but this might completely kill performance... and we'll have to see how compatible it is with real code).

[elichai]

@RalfJung Yes. this is a completely different issue than what I was describing,
what happened is that I had a complex function, saw that it didn't error, I removed a lot of code, replaced with read() and it did, so I wrongly assumed it was the read() change. sorry.

[elichai]

So together with my confusion and the fact that this is expected behavior I'll close this issue.
if you're curious this was the code snippet that got me here: rust-lang/rust#75943 (trying to minimize that down in the playground got me to accidentally assume deref was the problem)

[RalfJung]

I opened rust-lang/unsafe-code-guidelines#248 to track the underlying problem.