Re^2: Oh noooooo!!

[Hubert Matthews]

In article <14052 at lanl.gov> Jim Giles writes:
>
>The problem here is that C allows GOTOs in all the same contexts
>that Fortran does.  More importantly, C allows GOTOs that even 
>Fortran doesn't.  For example:
>[... perfectly correct example of C v. FORTRAN GOTOs...]
>So, the optimizer for C _cannot_ be any simpler than that for
>Fortran.

GOTOs are ubiquitous in FORTRAN and uncommon in C.  A FORTRAN compiler
needs to be able to optimise in the face of GOTOs, whereas a C
compiler is rarely called upon so to do.  Data-flow analysis is
complex and the need for it is justified for FORTRAN compilers but not
for C compilers owing to the relative frequencies of occurrence of
GOTOs in the two languages.


-- 
Hubert Matthews      ...helping make the world a quote-free zone...

hjm at cernvax.cern.ch   hjm at vxomeg.decnet.cern.ch    ...!mcvax!cernvax!hjm