Re: "Documentation by paper"

[kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)]

law@redhat.com  wrote on 03.02.04 in <200402031634.i13GYTa3019190@speedy.slc.redhat.com>:

> In message <10402031550.AA21796@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu>, Richard Kenner writes:
>  >    Which you have never read (at least a modern one), if you do not know
>  >    what a dominator is.  My first compiler course, which used only part
>  >    of Appel's "Modern compiler implementation" (which is nowhere near in
>  >    depth with respect to Muchnick or Morgan) did teach dominators.
>  >
>  >Correct.  My last compiler course was well over a decade ago.
> How is that relevant?  Dominators are discussed in several texts one
> can read, including, but not limited to Morgan, Muchnick, Appel, Aho, etc.
> Dominators actually pre-date your decade-ago compiler course.  Pick up a
> book and do a little reading :-)

Hmmm ... are they in the Dragon book? I certainly don't recall them, but  
then it's been a while since I last looked in there.

The Dragon book certainly covers (a lot) more than the compiler courses I  
took (which were at least two decades ago) - those covered none of those  
terms.

> Which I'm less and less inclined to do since we're using standard
> terminology dating back over 15 years (you can find dominators and
> dominator tree all the way back in the dragon book and probably
> earlier if you care to look).

Ah. Well, if it's in the Dragon book, I consider it easily available  
knowledge. (Gah. Where *did* I put that?)

> At some point you have to assume a base level of knowledge for your
> reader.  Are we going to define CFG in every file which uses the CFG?
> Are we going to define the basic properties of SSA in every
> file which uses that form?

Ever heard of this thing called a "glossary"? Needn't be in every file  
either. How about - daring idea - it gets put into a file called, oh,  
"glossary.texi"?

MfG Kai