Based on this very good blog post, The Strict Aliasing Situation is Pretty Bad, I've placed the piece of code online for you to test it:
http://cpp.sh/9kht (output changes between -O0 and -O2)
#include <stdio.h>
long foo(int *x, long *y) {
*x = 0;
*y = 1;
return *x;
}
int main(void) {
long l;
printf("%ld\n", foo((int *)&l, &l));
}
Is there some sort of undefined behaviour here?
What is going on internally when we choose the -O2 level?