Optimization (was Re: volatile)

[Every system needs one]

In article <1988May4.195636.1801 at utzoo.uucp>, henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
| [begin snotty tone :-)] Well, I suppose people who make errors, and thus
| need debuggers, would have to worry about such things, but I fail to see
| any reason why *I* should eat my hat...  [end tone] :-) :-)
| 
| More seriously, yes, debugging optimized code can be a real pain.  I don't
| think even the Mips people, who put in a lot of effort on things like this,
| have a debugger that can explain to you what the optimized code is doing.
| You just have to tone down the optimization for debugging, and pray that
| there aren't any serious differences of opinion between you and the optimizer
| when it comes time to "compile for production".

Ok.  You can wash the condiments off your hat.  ;-)

The point is that there shouldn't be differences of opinion in "good code",
and anywhere that such a thing is possible is an example of a bad assumption,
given that the code conforms to the same standard as the compiler.

A bad assumption is a compiler bug.  If a compiler can't compile conforming
code, it isn't a conforming compiler.

				terry at wsccs