Newsgroups: comp.arch
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Software Distribution
Message-ID: <1988Aug23.180420.28483@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1988Aug19.175624.19835@utzoo.uucp> <2793@hubcap.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 88 18:04:20 GMT

In article <2793@hubcap.UUCP> mrspock@hubcap.UUCP (Steve Benz) writes:
>> Things like data-type sizes often have to be decided before
>> the intermediate representation is generated, even if the details of the
>> code generation get deferred...
>
>I'm not sure what Henry talks about is really that big a problem,

Is the layout of structs in memory decided before or after the intermediate
representation is generated?  What about the results of "sizeof"?  How is
"varargs" handled?  And so forth.  If you try to build a completely machine-
independent "intermediate" form, I think you will end up with something that
looks very much like a tokenized version of the source.  This might or might
not be satisfactory for the original purposes, but an intermediate represen-
tation (in the usual sense of the word) it's not.
-- 
Intel CPUs are not defective,  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
they just act that way.        | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu