bnfb@uw-june (Benson) (09/02/86)
All the time, on the net, in casual conversation, in literature and
especially in discussions of the forthcoming C Language Standard, I have
heard the statement:
"You can allow/do/write <anything> because any
decent optimizing compiler will fix/compile it."
My question is:
How many of you who say this (or even just how many of you
on the net) have an optimizing C compiler? And how many of
those actually use them?
Until people have them, work-arounds ("kludges") will have to be. And
until people use the compilers, just writing <anything> won't do.
Bjorn Freeman-Benson
P.S. Oh, and what would you be willing to pay (up-and-above normal
C compiler costs) for such an optimizing compiler? Remember - until
you have one, you can't take advantage of it, but them engineers who
wrote it have a done a lot of work...hoffman@hdsvx1.UUCP (Richard Hoffman) (09/07/86)
In article <1184@uw-june> bnfb@uw-june (Benson) writes: >All the time, on the net, in casual conversation, in literature and >especially in discussions of the forthcoming C Language Standard, I have >heard the statement: > "You can allow/do/write <anything> because any > decent optimizing compiler will fix/compile it." >My question is: > How many of you who say this (or even just how many of you > on the net) have an optimizing C compiler? And how many of > those actually use them? If one develops programs on VMS, each compiler has an optimizer, and optimized output is the default (at least, this is true for the compilers I use -- FORTRAN, C, PL/I -- I assume it's true for most of the other major languages DEC supports). Also, every IBM compiler I ever worked with had an optimizer, and typically the last step before releasing a program was to run it through the optimizer. So I would imagine that probably the majority of programs are compiled these days with an optimizing compiler, whether the optimizer is used or not. Nevertheless, unless one is intimately familiar with the sorts of optimization that the compiler does, it makes sense to clean up one's one mess to the best extent possible. -- Richard Hoffman | "Oh life is a wonderful cycle of song, Schlumberger Well Services | A medley of extemporanea. hoffman%hdsvx1@slb-doll.csnet | And Love is a thing that can never go wrong PO Box 2175, Houston, TX 77252 | ... And I am Marie of Roumania." --D. PARKER