Re: Will C++ compilers ever be better than C compilers?

Bob Morgan <bob.morgan@digital.com> wrote:
>>You can make the argument that a C++ compiler will be more complex, ...


[SNIP]


mayan@watson.ibm.com (Mayan Moudgill) wrote: ... It would be
> interesting to see what would happen if somebody said - lets write
> _just_ a C compiler, and throw the same kinds of resources at that.


I'd like to see a C compiler with just two C++ features, // comments and
inline functions. Do the rest of C++ in a preprocessor. C++ optimisations
go in the preprocessor & aim at producing good C. C compiler has its
own optimisations.


Am I missing something, or is this a worthwhile approach?
[Good support for C++ templates and for debugging symbols probably
requires information that it would be impractical to pass through a
C compiler. Also, there's a bunch of optimizations that although
useful in principle in C are in practice mostly useful in C++, for
example, figuring out that an indirect function call through a vtbl
can be simplified to a direct call to the function. For optimizations
like that, it's probably easier to start with the direct C++ code than
to try to recognize the idiom in translated C code. Optimizing C++ is
already hard enough, don't make it harder. -John]






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