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From: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Compilers?
Message-ID: <2122@sol.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 11-Sep-87 10:09:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: sol.2122
Posted: Fri Sep 11 10:09:43 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 17:37:42 EDT
References: <1708@amiga.amiga.UUCP> <581@sugar.UUCP> <935@unicus.UUCP> <66@oresoft.UUCP> <5042@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> <70@oresoft.UUCP>
Reply-To: crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 26
Keywords: compiler assembler dwim mating
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.amiga:8246 comp.lang.misc:655

In article <70@oresoft.UUCP> rick@oresoft.UUCP (Rick Lahrson) writes:
>In article <5042@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike Meyer) writes:
>>In article <66@oresoft.UUCP> rick@oresoft.UUCP (Rick Lahrson) writes:
>>>Now there's a job that a compiler SHOULD be able to do -- generate code that
>>>relates to the target machine!)
>>
>>But you've got to convince the target machine to look like the machine
>>model the compiler wants to generate code for.
>
>Hmph.  I say the compiler should model the target hardware, and generate
>code for that.

Wait a second!  We have two models, the language model and the machine model.
The compiler itself does not model anything, it translates between two models.

I submit the language should not model any SPECIFIC machine.  (Note that most
algorithmic languages assume a rather generic von Neuman architecture.)

The compiler should implement the language's model on the machine's model as
best as possible given the development resources.  As long as the language
model is faithfully implemented, how close the resulting code is to the machine
model is a performance issue.  (All bets are off if you are mixing languages.)
-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-9499	University of Rochester
		     crowl@cs.rochester.arpa	Computer Science Department
 ...!{allegra,decvax,seismo}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627