C builtin functions?

[Davidsen]

At the first X3J11 conference in Washington DC I had a talk about
builtin procedures with Ralph Ryan of Microsoft. We agreed that it was
a desirable feature and talked about a new "builtin" or "intrinsic"
keyword for inline routines, given the caveat that no implementation
would be *required* to provide them as inline.

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.

Consider:
  register int foo(n)
    int n;
  {
  /* body */
    return (value);
  }

Which could be declared in a header file or somewhere, and the form:
  register foo();

Which is like an external declaration, but refers to a name known to
the compiler in an implementation. The action if the name were unknown
would be to treat it as "extern".

I had to leave the committee after two years, and nothing really came
of the topic, being bogged down in "const" and "volitile". If there is
an ANSI committee for C1990, I will try to participate again, since the
process is both interesting and effects my environment.
-- 
	-bill davidsen

	seismo!rochester!steinmetz!--\
       /                               \
ihnp4!              unirot ------------->---> crdos1!davidsen
       \                               /
        chinet! ---------------------/        (davidsen at ge-crd.ARPA)

"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"