Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihlpf!nevin1
From: nevin1@ihlpf.ATT.COM (00704a-Liber)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Power Proposal for ANSI C
Message-ID: <3520@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Date: 28 Jan 88 00:17:09 GMT
References: <302@Aragorn.dde.uucp> <7139@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3461@ihlpf.ATT.COM> <2370@haddock.ISC.COM>
Reply-To: nevin1@ihlpf.UUCP (00704a-Liber,N.J.)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 18

In article <2370@haddock.ISC.COM> karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer) writes:
.>In article <7139@brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
.>>... the squaring operator (expr ** 2) is quite heavily used.
.
.That's the point -- having to use the temp variables is a pain.  If the only
.expressions I ever wanted to square were simple variables, I wouldn't mind
.using the multiply.  It's because of the things with side effects (or even
.side-effect-free expressions that are complicated) that we want a power op.

That is what macros are for!  And a good optimizing compiler should get rid of
those variables when you are squaring simple variables.  The storage of the
value has to be made somewhere; I don't think it should be implicit when the
optimized code produced should be about the same either way.
-- 
 _ __			NEVIN J. LIBER	..!ihnp4!ihlpf!nevin1	(312) 510-6194
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