Re: Linux and aliasing?

[craig@jcb-sc.com]

>Sure, I can live with -fno-strict-aliasing. But I'm also really saddened
>by all the lawyers like you who think that standards are somehow more
>important than programmers. 

*Here*'s a clue: WE'RE PROGRAMMERS TOO.  Try reminding yourself of that
before the *next* time you flame our efforts to get a release out the
door without even providing a patch, much less a detailed specification,
to do what you want, okay?

>I think it's a damn shame that instead of technical arguments _everything_
>revolves around people reading the standard as if it was the bible, and
>trying to make people feel guilty for not really caring. It's not a sin to
>just want to get good code without having to do magic contortions, guys.

No, but it's stupid to want to do that in C or C++.  Even Fortran is a
better choice, and *it's* got lots of problems.

Ask Dakota Scientific Systems how they produce some of the most-optimized
numerical libraries on the planet.  They start with the original Fortran
code.  They look at the output from the native compiler for the particular
combination of architecture/CPU/cache-size/memory-latency that they're
targeting.  Then, they tweak the *original* Fortran code in order to
convince the compiler to generate better output for that target.

Fortunately, they seem experienced enough to understand that this process
works only for a *particularly* version of a compiler, rather than
believing that their tweaks must be honored for all time by that
compiler.  And, they don't seem to think it's necessary to ask the
compiler folks to add all sorts of fiddly little knobs to do *their*
work for them, based on my impressions from talking with one of the
people there.

But, then, they're *real* programmers.

        tq vm, (burley)