Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!snark!eric
From: eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Whaddinell is noalias anyway
Message-ID: <226fc1d7:9492@snark.UUCP>
Date: 22 Apr 88 21:57:00 GMT
Organization: /u/eric/.organization
Lines: 20
Summary: Noalias considered as compiler theology

In article <56@lakart.UUCP>, dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough) writes:
>                                however before I throw in my $0.02 worth
>could someone explain what noalias does.

One of the major problems with 'noalias' is that, beyond your rather general
idea of what it's for, it seems no two mortals have every succeeded in agreeing
on exactly what it implies.

The level of complexity and ill-definedness of the issues 'noalias' attempts
to address is sufficient to confuse even wizard-level systems programmers and
compiler jocks...yea, even unto the elect ranks of ANSI committee members. 

Those of us arguing against the committee's latter attempts to turn a
potentially useful standard into an exercise in compiler theology maintain
that this confusion is in itself sufficient reason to reject 'noalias'.

-- 
      Eric S. Raymond                     (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)
      UUCP: {{uunet,rutgers,ihnp4}!cbmvax,rutgers!vu-vlsi,att}!snark!eric
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