volatile: a summary

[Chris Torek]

>In article <11848 at mimsy.UUCP> I included the line
>>A perfect compiler would know as much as all its programmers combined ...

but I also included something very important that was subsequently deleted:

	OF COURSE, NO PERFECT COMPILERS EXIST, NOR ARE ANY LIKELY
	TO BE WRITTEN IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.

In article <691 at creare.UUCP> inb at creare.UUCP (Ian Brown) writes:
>In other words, with a perfect compiler, who needs programmers? :-)

Actually, if you augment it with a perfect language, yes.  (There may
be an inherent conflict between unambiguous languages and natural
languages, which might make perfect languages impossible.)

Again from my original article:

But good compilers do exist, and better ones are conceivable; a very good
compiler could use external information to find most (but not all)
variables that are certain *not* to have the attribute, and could then
assume that all others do, and this would suffice.

-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris at mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris