From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 10701 invoked by alias); 24 Jan 2007 01:39:59 -0000 Received: (qmail 10684 invoked by uid 22791); 24 Jan 2007 01:39:57 -0000 X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from VLSI1.ULTRA.NYU.EDU (HELO vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu) (128.122.140.213) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.31) with SMTP; Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:39:52 +0000 Received: by vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (4.1/1.34) id AA23676; Tue, 23 Jan 07 20:45:30 EST From: kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) Message-Id: <10701240145.AA23676@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:39:00 -0000 To: mark@codesourcery.com Subject: Re: [PATCH] Tree SRA and atomicity/volatility Cc: ebotcazou@adacore.com, gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org, richard.guenther@gmail.com In-Reply-To: <45B686FB.209@codesourcery.com> References: <200701061422.39157.ebotcazou@adacore.com> <45B63E9B.9090909@codesourcery.com> <84fc9c000701230924g37ed4f42vca8d7ae0c1ef6e52@mail.gmail.com> <45B6643C.6000800@codesourcery.com> <84fc9c000701231257u7fb1f10rdd3255be8aa69686@mail.gmail.com> <45B686FB.209@codesourcery.com> Mailing-List: contact gcc-patches-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-patches-owner@gcc.gnu.org X-SW-Source: 2007-01/txt/msg01964.txt.bz2 > I'm a big fan of specifications, but volatile is something where, in > practice, best-effort and semi-formal rules are probably the best we can > do, in the context of a portable compiler with a big legacy codebase. I agree, but also think it's more than that. Things at the level of what machine code is generated is something that's very hard to fit into a specification at a language level. You usually can't do that without resorting to a "you know what I mean" type of language.