Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ncar!oddjob!mimsy!chris From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: volatile: a summary Message-ID: <11896@mimsy.UUCP> Date: 10 Jun 88 05:12:50 GMT References: <11837@mimsy.UUCP> <3811@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> <11848@mimsy.UUCP> <691@creare.UUCP> Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 Lines: 24 >In article <11848@mimsy.UUCP> I included the line >>A perfect compiler would know as much as all its programmers combined ... but I also included something very important that was subsequently deleted: OF COURSE, NO PERFECT COMPILERS EXIST, NOR ARE ANY LIKELY TO BE WRITTEN IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. In article <691@creare.UUCP> inb@creare.UUCP (Ian Brown) writes: >In other words, with a perfect compiler, who needs programmers? :-) Actually, if you augment it with a perfect language, yes. (There may be an inherent conflict between unambiguous languages and natural languages, which might make perfect languages impossible.) Again from my original article: But good compilers do exist, and better ones are conceivable; a very good compiler could use external information to find most (but not all) variables that are certain *not* to have the attribute, and could then assume that all others do, and this would suffice. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163) Domain: chris@mimsy.umd.edu Path: uunet!mimsy!chris