observability

[P E Smee]

In article <10321 at csli.Stanford.EDU> poser at csli.stanford.edu (Bill Poser) writes:
>In article <1989Sep8.091010.12450 at gdt.bath.ac.uk> exspes at gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) writes:
>>one might ask why you would want to write a chunk
>>of code that has ZERO effect.
>
>I sometimes do this during program development. I declare the data
>structures and write the code that operates on them, leaving the i/o
>to worry about later. I may want to compile at this point to check
>for errors in the code.

Well, maybe.  Still, in that case you shouldn't be using an optimizing
pass of the compiler yet, and I at least would claim that a non-optimizing
compiler *shouldn't* go rearranging the code in any significant manner.
(And, I would also assert that a compiler *shouldn't* go throwing away
blocks of code simply because they don't do anything, without warning you
it's doing so -- again on grounds that people don't usually intend their
code to do nothing.)

Alternatively, take that as (yet another) reason for using C rather than
FORTRAN.

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