Re: programmer optimizations?

Virendra K. Mehta <c1veeru@WATSON.IBM.COM> wrote:
>I remember reading somewhere that C had a stillborn reserved word 'noalias'.
>Was it supposed to convey the same meaning ? Why was it discontinued and how
>good an idea would it be to revive it ?


I personally wasn't there at the time, but from what I've heard, ``noalias''
had two strikes against it in the ANSI C committee. First, the proposal
arrived only very very late in the game. Second, it has some definite
(although arguably minor and/or fixable) flaws. (Dennis Richey was among
the folks who pointed out the flaws.)


Our moderator writes:


>[There have been a variety of C extensions proposed for "noalias" or
>"restricted" pointers. Noalias failed to make it into the standard because
>they couldn't get a clean enough definition of it in the time frame they had.
>Restricted pointers may show up in C9X. -John]


I, for one, certainly hope so. As a member of X3J11, I've had an opportunity
to take a look at the ``restrict'' proposal developed by Tom MacDonald @
Cray Research and I've been very favorably impressed. I think Tom's done
a fine job on it, and I also believe that it avoids and/or eliminates the
flaws which were associated with the earlier ``noalias'' proposal.


-- Ron Guilmette, Sunnyvale, CA
---- E-mail: rfg@segfault.us.com
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.