https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=84234
--- Comment #4 from Florian Lemaitre <gcc.account at lemaitre dot re> --- Ah... ok. I understand. Indeed, declaring the function const works as expected. So, I guess we can say it is not a bug, and close the bug report? However, I really think this should be documented somewhere. Currently, there is no mention of side effects within GCC existing documentation either here: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Common-Function-Attributes.html#Common-Function-Attributes or here (referenced by previous page): https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/libmvec?action=AttachFile&do=view&target=VectorABI.txt