Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!goanna!ok
From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Aggressive optimization
Message-ID: <4179@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 1 Nov 90 08:50:20 GMT
References: <2301@wn1.sci.kun.nl> <8960020@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 23

In article <8960020@hpfcso.HP.COM>, mjs@hpfcso.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella) writes:
> None of these transformations violate the cardinal rule of assemblers,
> namely that of providing a one-to-one translation.

At which ecumenical council was this cardinal rule adopted?

It's worth pointing out that the optimisations done by the MIPS
assembler _can_ be disabled.

Surely the cardinal rule for an assembler is not "one-to-one translation"
but "full access to all machine operations".  If you want a particular
sequence of bits in an executable code area, you should be able to get
them.  The MIPS assembler lets you do that.  Why is it evil to offer
optimisation as well?

(Now the assembler _I_ would gripe about is the one where I had to
write a lot indirect branches as ".value MagicNumber" because the
assembler didn't understand "jp *%ax", although the disassembler,
debugger, hardware, and manufacturer's manual _did_ support it.)

-- 
The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3
may always be replied to with a lob across the net.  --Alasdair Macintyre.