From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 9122 invoked by alias); 12 May 2003 11:37:25 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 13804 invoked from network); 12 May 2003 11:31:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO nile.gnat.com) (205.232.38.5) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 12 May 2003 11:31:41 -0000 Received: by nile.gnat.com (Postfix, from userid 338) id F26F5F2C2C; Mon, 12 May 2003 07:31:40 -0400 (EDT) To: kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu, matz@suse.de Subject: Re: An issue for the SC: horrible documentation quality of GCC Cc: gcc@gcc.gnu.org Message-Id: <20030512113140.F26F5F2C2C@nile.gnat.com> Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 11:37:00 -0000 From: dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) X-SW-Source: 2003-05/txt/msg01102.txt.bz2 > Well, on the top of gcse.c it says, that one of the passes in GCSE is > copy/constant propagation. This is a standard optimization, and hence the > actual description of any algorithm (on the high level) seems superflous. > Tricks used in the implementation should of course be documented, but have > no place in any high level overview comments. copy/constant propagation is really quite vague. it can refer to various algorithms and intended optimizations. I think it is quite important to define terms like this. Often people have taken a compiler course, or read some particular book, or set of papers, and they assume that terminology is standard. That's far from true in the compiler field in general, and in optimization in particular, so it is quite important to define terms like this clearly.