minow@decvax.UUCP (Martin Minow) (05/30/84)
In a posting a few months ago, I noted that the Draft Ansi C Standard was very restrictive as to how C may be optimized. It precluded common sub-expression recognition, for example. The latest draft of the standard, received late last week, had a paragraph that explained that the standard described an "abstract machine" in which processing takes place so fast as to render optimizations irrelevant. It than suggests that a compiler for a real machine must give the same results as one for the abstract machine. If I understand this correctly -- and, please note that I am quoting from memory -- it would seem to indicate that C compilers can optimize the code and still conform to the Standard. Please accept my apologies for any confusion I may have caused. Martin Minow decvax!minow