bart@videovax.Tek.COM (Bart Massey) (11/24/88)
In article <3663@pt.cs.cmu.edu> agn@unh.cs.cmu.edu (Andreas Nowatzyk) writes:
[ a bunch of reasons why inline functions are silly in cfront ]
I'm sure I won't be the first to point this out, but I don't think GCC/G++'s
inline functions have any of the problems you mentioned. In fact, the code
produced by inline functions in this compiler is often better than you could
do with a macro. This is because the compiled code is inlined, not the
source text. (Heck, you can even have inlines with *tail recursion* :-).
The problem, as a previous poster pointed out, is that inlines are badly
implemented in cfront. Note, for example, that one could still generate C
code to implement an instantiation of an inline function which violates the
cfront restrictions (e.g. no loops, no void function calls) -- it just
wouldn't be representable as a comma expression, and thus the inline and the
surrounding output C code wouldn't necessarily look anything like the source.
I think I'll write a machine description for GCC which emits K&R C. 1/2 :-)
Bart Massey
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