🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <MEISSNER.90Oct25130214@osf.osf.org> meissner@osf.org (Michael Meissner) writes:
>| > Assembly languages are the only ones I know of in which _no_
>| > operational freedom is granted to the 'compiler'.
>| 
>| It is possible to allow an assember to rearrange code for optimization.
>
>And in fact on systems that use the MIPS chips (MIPSco, SGI,
>DECstation), the assemblers already do this, primarily to fill delay
>slots and such.  If I really need to know about what the assembler did
>behind my back, I have to disassemble the object module.

When I was first taught any computer science, I was taught that an assembler
performed a one-to-one translation of assembly language mnemonics to
machine instructions. I like, and can understand, that definition.

I don't consider instruction scheduling, and the removal of no-ops in
the delay slots, as "a one-to-one translation".

Am I the only programmer who wishes that MIPS hadn't "corrupted" the word
"assembler", but had used some other term instead?

---
Conor O'Neill, Software Group, INMOS Ltd., UK.
UK: conor@inmos.co.uk		US: conor@inmos.com
"It's state-of-the-art" "But it doesn't work!" "That is the state-of-the-art".