Re: backend question

"David Chase" <chase@world.std.com>
20 Nov 2002 15:23:06 -0500

          From comp.compilers

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[8 later articles]
| List of all articles for this month |

From: "David Chase" <chase@world.std.com>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 20 Nov 2002 15:23:06 -0500
Organization: The World : www.TheWorld.com : Since 1989
References: 02-11-063 02-11-078 02-11-099
Keywords: C, design
Posted-Date: 20 Nov 2002 15:23:06 EST

On 17 Nov 2002 23:20:16 -0500, thp@cs.ucr.edu wrote:
> Joachim Durchholz <joachim_d@gmx.de> wrote:
> + Which doesn't mean it's particularly suitable... C gets you started
> + quickly, but for an intermediate format, it abstracts away the wrong
> + things in some places. This begins to bite if you're doing
> + concurrency, exceptions, fancy integer arithmetic, tail-call
> + elimination, or state machines.


> Standard C lacks an indirect jump (though one can be kludged a switch
> statement). Anything that can be done in say MIPS assembly language
> can be done in gcc, which has an indirect goto. Where necessary, one
> can generates comments that preserve the memory of what got abstracted
> away.


Standard C doesn't give you enough control to write a precise garbage
collector (one that can see all the pointers, and exactly all the
pointers), nor does it give you good control of things like rounding
modes. Standard C also doesn't give you the ability to move your
execution stack (if, for instance, it is too small). Standard C also
gives you less than adequate control of floating point.


David Chase


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