🚀 go-pugleaf

Mike Newberry (newberry@aquarius.as.arizona.edu) wrote:
: One point you brought up that I forgot to mention about the Watcom C/386
: compiler is that it can pass and retrieve arguments using registers instead
: of pushing and popping the stack as per the original C standard.  That does
: save some time when your code calls a function inside a tight loop.  The
: Watcom C/386 compiler is an industrial strength package that one doesn't find
: all that often in the PC world. I understand that Metaware's compiler is
: of similar caliber but I can't speak from experience with it.

Come to think of it it has always been one of my pet peeves why compilers
don't just treat code as one big piece of, well, code. It could keep a
track of when variables 'start' and when they 'finish' and allocate
memory/use registers accordingly, despite the fact there may happen to
be a few functions (which are never called from anywhere else) nested
in there. It makes programming in a structured way also the most
inefficient way to program! (unless you use assembly...(bias)) But I'm
going against my original comment that robust and intelligent compilers
would be difficult to make. Another (as you noticed) is that C is really
a low level language and 'the standard' assumes you know what the machine
is going to do with your code.

We've actually got a Watcom fortran 486 compiler here which is supposed
to scream. Apparently only works on a 486. I might get into it and see
how it ticks (after learning fortran again...).

I must shut up on this subject anyway. Always gets me into trouble!

Antony