Exploring different implementations of the same functionality in optimized assembly

[TomP]

What types have all valid bit patterns

Although it's been mentioned in many other threads, I haven't seen it in this one. Some architectures, most notably Itanium, detect and fault on [edit: read] references to uninitialized memory. The fact that all bit patterns in an initialized memory cell are valid does not imply that the same memory cell can be read when uninitialized.