Re: deadcode optimization

Norman Black <stonybrk@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
[...]
> I understand the legacy of C compilers back to the original. They have
> global and local symbols in the object format. A static in a file
> would use a local symbol. As a non C user I could care less about that
> and have no use for it. The languages I use all support compilation
> units and the C "symbol issues"(namespace stuff) disappear with the
> existence of compilation units. Even so I still do not see the need,
> other than legacy, to use local symbols in a C compiler.


I think you may have overlooked one central point, here. First of all,
C does support compilation units. Syntactic details vary wildly
between C and the somewhat stricter languages , but the concept is
there.


But talking about dead code elimination, previous articles in this
thread had pointed out that the compilation units have to be *broken
apart* before they are presented to a usual Unix-type linker. And in
this cracking-open process it is that variables local to the
compilation unit will cause problems, since the compilation unit is no
longer the same as the linkage unit.


This problem is, AFAICS, completely independent of whether you call
these variables 'static', in C parlance, or define them in the
'implementation part' of a more strongly modularized language. It's
rather caused by the concept of an monolithic compilation unit
(i.e. an 'object file) being presented to a linker that has no way of
isolating individual functions or data objects from such a monolithic
unit.


I.e. it's the linker that makes this hard, not the compiler, nor the
language it compiles.
--
Hans-Bernhard Broeker (broeker@physik.rwth-aachen.de)

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