Re: C as assembly language

Andreas Krall <andi@complang.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> "Joachim Durchholz" <joachim_d@gmx.de> writes:
> > Hmm... there are a few additional cases where C is simply
> > inappropriate: ...
> >
> > Oh, and slightly off-topic, there are a few other things that annoy
> > those who want to use C as a backend for their compiler:
> > 3) It has no support for tail call recursion.
> > 4) It has no support for automatic garbage collection.
> > (The following are from http://www.cminusminus.org/faq.html:)
> > 5) It cannot return multiple values in registers
> > 6) It cannot bind global variables to registers
>
> Here you mix up the language definition of C with current
> implementions of C compilers.


This doesn't really make a difference if I select a backend.
Sure, I can restrict my language to a specific C implementation. But
that's exactly the type of restriction that will cripple a language.


> Some C compilers do not implement the above mentioned features, but
> many implement proper tail call recursion,


This does *not* help. Tail-call optimization removes a factor of N from
big-O complexities for many typical functional programs, and that's so
important that some languages even specify this optimization as
*required* for a valid implementation.


> ad 4) There is always the Boehm/Weiser GC


... which doesn't do finalization.
(Or does it?)


Regards,
Joachim

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