Bounds checking¶

Eliding bounds checks¶

The @boundscheck(...) macro marks blocks of code that perform bounds checking. When such blocks appear inside of an @inbounds(...) block, the compiler removes these blocks. When the @boundscheck(...) is nested inside of a calling function containing an @inbounds(...), the compiler will remove the @boundscheck block only if it is inlined into the calling function. For example, you might write the method sum as:

function sum(A::AbstractArray)r=zero(eltype(A))fori=1:length(A)@inboundsr+=A[i]endreturnrend

With a custom array-like type MyArray having:

@inlinegetindex(A::MyArray,i::Real)=(@boundscheckcheckbounds(A,i);A.data[to_index(i)])

Then when getindex is inlined into sum, the call to checkbounds(A,i) will be elided. If your function contains multiple layers of inlining, only @boundscheck blocks at most one level of inlining deeper are eliminated. The rule prevents unintended changes in program behavior from code further up the stack.

Propagating inbounds¶

There may be certain scenarios where for code-organization reasons you want more than one layer between the @inbounds and @boundscheck declarations. For instance, the default getindex methods have the chain getindex(A::AbstractArray,i::Real) calls getindex(linearindexing(A),A,i) calls _getindex(::LinearFast,A,i).

To override the “one layer of inlining” rule, a function may be marked with @propagate_inbounds to propagate an inbounds context (or out of bounds context) through one additional layer of inlining.

The bounds checking call hierarchy¶

The overall hierarchy is:

Here A is the array, and I contains the “requested” indices. indices(A) returns a tuple of “permitted” indices of A.

checkbounds(A,I...) throws an error if the indices are invalid, whereas checkbounds(Bool,A,I...) returns false in that circumstance. checkbounds_indices discards any information about the array other than its indices tuple, and performs a pure indices-vs-indices comparison: this allows relatively few compiled methods to serve a huge variety of array types. Indices are specified as tuples, and are usually compared in a 1-1 fashion with individual dimensions handled by calling another important function, checkindex: typically,

checkbounds_indices(Bool,(IA1,IA...),(I1,I...))=checkindex(Bool,IA1,I1)&checkbounds_indices(Bool,IA,I)

so checkindex checks a single dimension. All of these functions, including the unexported checkbounds_indices and checkbounds_logical, have docstrings accessible with ? .

If you have to customize bounds checking for a specific array type, you should specialize checkbounds(Bool,A,I...). However, in most cases you should be able to rely on checkbounds_indices as long as you supply useful indices for your array type.

If you have novel index types, first consider specializing checkindex, which handles a single index for a particular dimension of an array. If you have a custom multidimensional index type (similar to CartesianIndex), then you may have to consider specializing checkbounds_indices.

Note this hierarchy has been designed to reduce the likelihood of method ambiguities. We try to make checkbounds the place to specialize on array type, and try to avoid specializations on index types; conversely, checkindex is intended to be specialized only on index type (especially, the last argument).