Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: inline policy
Message-ID: <2203@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 13 Nov 89 20:03:29 GMT
References: <1520008@hpmwjaa.HP.COM> <1520010@hpmwjaa.HP.COM> <28966@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> <1218@svx.SV.DG.COM>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 15

The inline keyword is a *hint* to the compiler, nothing more, nothing less.
It is not a command.

The similarities to the register keyword are worth
noting. The compiler is free to use or ignore the register keyword. In
fact, modern compilers ignore it and do their own register assignments.
The original reason for the register keyword are that compilers weren't
sophisticated enough to do it automatically.

Currently (with the separate compilation model), compilers are not
sophisticated enough to make the proper decisions about inlining versus
instantiating functions. The inline keyword is therefore there to help
out. I fully expect in the future that the inlining decision will be
made appropriately by the compiler, and that the inline keyword can be
dropped.