🚀 go-pugleaf

vancleef@ohstpy.mps.ohio-state.edu wrote:
: In article <8biTwcM6hDXK083yn@encomix.es>, marauder@encomix.es (Marauder) writes:
: > danker@hardy.ocs.mq.edu.au (Duncan Anker) wrote:
: >    But isn't it better to have all the vars at the top, commented, indented,
: >    and initialized so you always know where to find them?

: No. I prefer to control whether or not resources will be needed in
: a routine. When you declare everything at the top you are executing all of
: thosstack allocations. I prefer to control those stack allocations, and
: being able to place a declaration in the code when I will actually
: need it is useful for both speed and memory usage.

Hmmm, well I admit I don't know how the C/C++ compilers do it, but I would 
expect that every local variable used in a function is allocated on the
at the stack at the beginning of the function no matter what!

The reason I think this is that, on x86 machines at least, local variables
are referenced like this:

  push ebp
  mov ebp, esp

  mov eax, [ebp-4]
  mov ebx, [ebp-8]

etc.

So, if the compiler doesn't allocate space for all local variables on the 
stack at the start, it won't be able to reference variables in different
scopes!

I would expect the compiler would pre-allocate local variables at the start, 
then initialise them (if necessary) where they are defined!

Anyway, really I have no idea :), but it sounds good!

Bye,
	Alec