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Subject: Re: GCC 2.95 big step forward

Author: Paul J. Messmer

Date: 15:02:01 08/07/99

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On August 07, 1999 at 16:44:40, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>warnings really are 'warnings'.  99 % of them are type mismatches in procedure
>calls, but since it knows this, it does the conversions just fine.  I compile
>linux with my old pgcc for years...  and it has worked _flawlessly_.  And I
>don't think either your program nor mine are _anything_ like as complex as
>Linux is...
>

One further thought...  It may not matter much how "complex" a program is from a
software engineering measure of complexity, when it comes to tripping up a
compiler.  A large project that has well written code (which usually implies
easily readable, and thus without terribly complex expressions or tricks) can be
less likely to trip up a compiler than something smaller but nasty (perhaps it
uses "tricks," or has obfuscated code, is just working on something very
mathematically complex, or uses bleeding edge C++ features to the max).
Of the Linux code I've seen, some of it sure looked better than stuff I've had
to work with :)

The "macro" complexity of something often matters only in that the bigger
something is, the more lines of code there are to cause a possible issue.  The
local complexity of the code is sometimes much more relevant in breaking a
compiler.

---
Paul J. Messmer
http://www.spootopia.com
messmer@netcom.com



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