Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ll-xn!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!gatech!uflorida!novavax!proxftl!bill
From: bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Noalias trivia question
Summary: another halting problem
Message-ID: <198@proxftl.UUCP>
Date: 19 May 88 20:01:14 GMT
References: <56@lakart.UUCP> <1164@maccs.UUCP> <5995@utcsri.UUCP> <530@wsccs.UUCP>
Organization: Proximity Technology, Ft. Lauderdale
Lines: 11

Noalias is bad for a number of reasons, which I do not care to
discuss; however, you, terry@wsccs, seem to have an exaggerated
notion of what is possible for an optimizer to do.  Noalias
solves a problem which CANNOT be solved by an optimizer (yes,
this is another problem which can be shown to be equivalent to a
halting problem).  Please, before you flame others for supporting
things like this with comments like: "let the optimizer do it",
why don't you find out whether it is actually possible for the
compiler to do it?

(Another unsolvable problem: when will the programmer stop
flaming?  :-)