volatile isn't necessary, but it's there

[Barry Margolin]

In article <7624 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>In article <7794 at alice.UUCP> dmr at alice.UUCP writes:
>>Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the more peculiar things that X3J11
>>has added (volatile, and especially noalias) are there for the
>>benefit of compiler writers and benchmarkers, and not for the user?
>I don't really know a way to counter this inevitable trend other than to
>show up at the meetings and try to represent a user's viewpoint.

Who says that users aren't interested in good optimization?  I recall
that several of the advocates of volatile in this forum were from the
user community.  They are looking forward to compilers that can do a
good job of optimization without screwing them because of it.

Making things a little easier for the compiler writers means that they
can include more good features.  And that directly benefits the users.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar at think.com
uunet!think!barmar