Optimization (was Re: volatile)

[Every system needs one]

In article <474 at sas.UUCP>, bts at sas.UUCP (Brian T. Schellenberger) writes:
| In article <13074 at brl-adm.ARPA> dsill at NSWC-OAS.arpa (Dave Sill) writes:
| |I (Terry) write:
| |>Basically, if it works without -O, it should work with -O, regardless of what
| |>the compiler writer's optimization does to achieve its goal.  If this makes
| |>writing compilers harder, so what?
| |
| |This bears repeating.  There should be no circumstances under which
| |the semantics of the language are changed by a flag to the compiler.
| 
| And anyway, you can always compile with minimal optimization if you find doing
| really unreasonable things makes you happy.

I find compiling my K&R code which runs on many machines today on different
machines in 10 years at an inconvenience to optimizer writers makes me happy.
It makes the optimizer writer's unhappy.  I am more deserving of happy ;-).

Is that unreasonable?  Being a compiler user, rather than a compiler writer
(at least not a 'C' compiler writer), there are more of me, and more is
better.  I know this is true, otherwise what would the compilers be written
in, given that there are more compilers being written that there are, in this
case.


| Terry Lambert           UUCP: ...{ decvax, ihnp4 } ...utah-cs!century!terry |
| @ Century Software        OR: ...utah-cs!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!terry    |
| SLC, Utah                                                                   |
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