Optimizing C compilers, and their use...

[Richard Hoffman]

In article <1184 at uw-june> bnfb at 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.
-- 
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