Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: The world is not ready for 'volatile'
Message-ID: <9273@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 4 Jan 89 07:48:03 GMT
References: <141@bms-at.UUCP> <275@twwells.uucp> <15166@mimsy.UUCP> <903@husc6.harvard.edu> <15248@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <15248@mimsy.UUCP> chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>For folks concerned with portability, the word `volatile' does not
>exist in the language (with one exception), since the actual effect of
>the volatile qualifier is compiler-dependent.

No, that's wrong.  A conforming compiler is obliged to generate code
for "volatile" object accesses strictly in accordance with the
virtual machine model (no caching).  It is OTHER mechanisms for
accessing a volatile object during execution that are not specified.