Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsp!gillies
From: gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Knowing Machine Code
Message-ID: <104700041@uiucdcsp>
Date: 16 Jun 88 02:39:00 GMT
References: <13735@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
Lines: 22
Nf-ID: #R:comp.vuw.ac.nz:13735:uiucdcsp:104700041:000:1075
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Jun 15 21:39:00 1988


Re:  Why doesn't SANE run when I invoke a 68881 opcode?
Q:   Does the SANE package implement the same semantics as IEEE
     standard floating point?  If not, then perhaps it was a good
     choice not to make them the same.  I think they really are different
     instructions.

Re:  "What a headache it would be to use two separate compilers,
      for they would compile two slightly different versions of the
      same language"
A:   1.  I don't think you have enough faith in language standards.
     2.  Furthermore, you don't have faith in language test suites.
     3.  Also, you don't have faith in language implementors.
     4.  Finally, the same problem crops up when you hit the -o (optimize)
	  switch on any given compiler with an optimizer?

The problem is solvable, just don't hire high school students to write
your compiler(s)!  Much of the code (in particular, the parser
generator, the BNF, some symbol table implementation) could be shared
between two such compilers.

Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
            {gillies@cs.uiuc.edu}