C builtin functions?

[KW Heuer]

In article <716 at steinmetz.UUCP> steinmetz!davidsen (Davidsen) writes:
>At that point, given that we were talking about an "advisory" keyword,
>and that obviously you couldn't take the address of an intrinsic
>function, one of us suggested that the term "register" be used, since
>it may be ignored by the compiler, and prevents taking the address of a
>variable.

I thought of that too!  However, I think the meaning is sufficiently
different from a register variable that it's better to use a new keyword.

>register foo() { ... }
>register foo();

You seem to be using the former to mean "inline" and the latter to mean
"builtin".  These are not the same concept!  Also, why should the user
have to know which functions are (or might be) builtins?  They should be
automatically recognized by the compiler unless explicitly disabled.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ihnp4!bentley!kwh), The Walking Lint