Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!oliveb!jal
From: jal@oliveb.olivetti.com (Benjamin G. Golding)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Noalias considered unreadable, let alone a bad idea
Message-ID: <13826@oliveb.olivetti.com>
Date: 27 Jan 88 16:00:58 GMT
References: <7072@brl-smoke.ARPA> <7160@brl-smoke.ARPA> <3932@hoptoad.uucp> <583@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, CA
Lines: 21
Summary: what about maintenance?

In article <583@cresswell.quintus.UUCP>, ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
> I have tried several times to read the description of 'noalias' that
> was posted here.  I couldn't.  Maybe it's just me, [...]

No, it's not just you - I am having just as much trouble.

I consider myself an average C programmer (some people will disagree
with this) and I tend to find myself writing less new code and
maintaining more that written by others; I seem to remember reading
that this is what most programmers do ("The Psychology of Computer
Programming" by Weinberg).

What I am worried about is changing someone else's code where they have
used "noalias" and inadvertantly creating a heck of a lot of trouble
for myself.  When I add this to the fact that I am unlikely to ever use
this "feature," it just doesn't seem worth a damn thing.  If you want
to do vectorisation, do it properly - don't just tag it onto an
existing language and lumber its users with the complexity.

	Ben Golding.
	Olivetti (Ivrea).		...!oliveb!icodap!taylor