Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: bizarre instructions Message-ID: Date: 28 Feb 91 18:22:06 GMT References: <10244@dog.ee.lbl.gov> <1991Feb25.203629.5059@linus.mitre.org> <10278@dog.ee.lbl.gov> <3025@charon.cwi.nl> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 38 Nntp-Posting-Host: odin In-reply-to: dik@cwi.nl's message of 26 Feb 91 02:25:39 GMT On 26 Feb 91 02:25:39 GMT, dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) said: [ ... mul-add-div-rem primitive should be defined in some header, rather than the compiler provide, like GCC, the primitives to define it efficiently ... ] dik> And this is exactly what Bob Silverman wants (if I read his mind dik> correctly that is). As it is now, every user has to write his own dik> for every platform he encounters (and I have written some 40 upto dik> now, though through the use of subroutine calls, not through dik> inlining in gcc). This ought to be encouraged. I think that the FSF should be much more about libraries than about commands. The emphasis on programs/commands instead of reusable libraries is one of tragic historic legacies of Unix. The technical question is which language architecture best supports coding efficient libraries and efficient library use; then there is a practical (economics, politics) question of writing those libraries. dik> And that was also the complaint of Peter Montgomery who has dik> proposed such a thing for the Fortran standard, and it is not dik> there. The current state of affairs is that it is not in the dik> standard for most languages. But this is not something we ought to argue about in comp.arch; it is no longer about how to define a language architecture so that it may take advantage of specifics of the CPU architecture if possible. What you want is not a technical solution, it is legislation. "There ought to be a law..."; in your case it is one that makes compiler writers provide your favourite primitives on all the platforms you want to use. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk