problems/risks ...

[Nick Rothwell]

In article <2000 at l.cc.purdue.edu>, cik at l.cc (Herman Rubin) writes:
>In article <300 at isgtec.UUCP>, robert at isgtec.UUCP (Robert A. Osborne) writes:
>> lou at atanasoff.rutgers.edu (Lou Steinberg) writes:
>> >ARGHHH!!  That is what subroutines (and macros) are for - to handle
>> >common code.  And if your language makes them too expensive, either in
>> >terms of run time or in terms of programmer effort, then THAT is an
>> >even worse problem with the language than the problems with break.
>> ARGHHH!! Why are we constantly bombarded with people who do not understand
>> that PEFORMANCE IS SOMETIMES AN ISSUE!!!!!
>> 
>> I was under the impression that C's function calls are, relative to other
>> high level languages, very inexpensive, (is this still true?)
>> in which case if you are using fall-through to gain speed (which I have
>> done several times) there is probably a good reason!
>
>Simple, yes.  Inexpensive, no.

How about "free"? Is there any reason why a decent compiler shouldn't
beta-reduce function calls to inlining?

"Why are we constantly bombarded by people who do not understand that
compiler technology can solve a lot of these problems, if only we
could move away from 20 year old compilers".

I could also make a comment about moving away from horrible
20-year-old languages like C, but I suspect that's not an option.

>I can conceive of a way in which hardware
>can be constructed which would make subroutine calls inexpensive, but I
>know of no machine which has it.  

Do it in the compiler.

>Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907

		Nick.
--
Nick Rothwell,	Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh.
		nick at lfcs.ed.ac.uk    <Atlantic Ocean>!mcvax!ukc!lfcs!nick
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