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From: jthomas@nmsu.edu (James Thomas)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: cc optimizer dies on a few perl.4.0.beta files
Message-ID: <907@opus.NMSU.Edu>
Date: 30 Mar 91 00:06:33 GMT
References: <BESHERS.91Mar21184234@division.cs.columbia.edu>
	<7370347@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> <821@tiamat.fsc.com>
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In-reply-to: jim@tiamat.fsc.com's message of 29 Mar 91 20:55:44 GMT

In article <821@tiamat.fsc.com> jim@tiamat.fsc.com ( IT Manager) writes:

jim> In article <7370347@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM>, mike@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Mike McNelly) writes:
> 
> It's quite possible that the optimizer had a bug in it.  It's also quite
> possible that the source program had a bug that was unmasked by
> optimization (this happens a lot).  Until the problem is tracked down no
> one will ever know for sure.

jim> We ran into a snag with -O that pointed out some poor programming
jim> habits (or probably just a mistake we over looked).  As it happened, I
jim> left out the code to initialize a variable before use.
...
jim> I never got a warning or error message in either case, so either I
jim> don't have the warning message level set right, or the compiler just
jim> doesn't tell you about these things I should remember to do in the
jim> first place.

lint may be painful, but that's exactly what it's for :-)
Try it, you might like it :-)

Jim