Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!amdahl!amdcad!crackle!tim
From: tim@crackle.amd.com (Tim Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Clever programming tricks wanted
Message-ID: <24033@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 12 Jan 89 21:34:15 GMT
References: <4061@hubcap.UUCP> <47380@yale-celray.yale.UUCP>
Sender: news@amdcad.AMD.COM
Reply-To: tim@crackle.amd.com (Tim Olson)
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Sunnyvale CA
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In article <47380@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> wald-david@CS.YALE.EDU (david wald) writes:
| In article <4061@hubcap.UUCP> mcvax!etive.ed.ac.uk!gvw@uunet.UU.NET (MOBY) writes:
| >I'm looking for "clever" programming tricks.
| 
| A year or so ago someone showed me a paper in which the author described
| a semi-automated hack generator (my phrasing, not the author's).
|
| Some of the code generated by this thing was extremely non-intuitive,
| even when it was correct, making use of obscure flag settings and such,
| and certainly qualified for the "hack" title.

A lot of the trickiness was using the carry bit in strange ways.

| Does any one recognize this work?  I'll try to dig up the reference.

"Superoptimizer: A look at the Smallest Program", H. Massalin, ASPLOS II
Proceedings.


	-- Tim Olson
	Advanced Micro Devices
	(tim@crackle.amd.com)