Keywords (or #pragma's) for program transformation

Have there ever been any proposals to add keywords ( to C/FORTRAN/et.al. )
to give compiler hints for program transformation.


Something along the lines of "volatile", "inline", "register", etc. but
specifically:


1) A keyword to indicate whether or not a specific function is a
referentially transparent function, and therefore can be replaced
by remembering a previous call. e.g.
      sin(x), cos(x) always return the same value for the same argument.
      rand(), & read() emphatically DO NOT, as do any functions that
          produce side-effects, even when they do return the same value.


2) A keyword to indicate the relative expense of a procedure.
    To be used in conjunction with the above to help the compiler decide
    whether it is worth the expense of "memo-izing" the results of a
    previous function call.




Note: #1 can be used without #2, but only under static analysis.


Is this sort of thing used in any real compilers ?


I'm interested to hear opinions (other that the obvious ones about
the deficiencies of C/FORTRAN in this reguard versus real functional
programming languages).


- Steve
  Steven D. Majewski University of Virginia Physiology Dept.
  sdm7g@Virginia.EDU Box 449 Health Sciences Center
  Voice: (804)-982-0831/32 1300 Jefferson Park Avenue
  FAX: (804)-982-1616 Charlottesville, VA 22908
[Some versions of PL/I have used REDUCIBLE to indicate that multiple
identical calls may be combined, and the original intent of Fortran
FUNCTIONS was probably the same, although F90 doesn't appear tolet you
combine identical function references. -John]
--

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