Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hpfcso!mike
From: mike@hpfcso.HP.COM (Mike McNelly)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: Volatile (was Re: observability)
Message-ID: <7330001@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Date: 13 Sep 89 15:41:08 GMT
References: <28993@news.Think.COM>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Lines: 17

> In article <1989Sep8.091010.12450@gdt.bath.ac.uk> exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee) writes:
> >one might ask why you would want to write a chunk
> >of code that has ZERO effect.

> I sometimes do this during program development. I declare the data
> structures and write the code that operates on them, leaving the i/o
> to worry about later. I may want to compile at this point to check
> for errors in the code.

Ah, but any compiler that has optimization capabilities that would allow
it to nullify a useless program invariably does not do such optimization
unless you ask for it with flags such as -O. My guess is that you don't
optimize such a program during development, only after development is
nearly complete.

Mike McNelly
mike%hpfcla@hplabs.hp.com