Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!kddlab!titcca!sragwa!wsgw!socslgw!diamond!diamond
From: diamond@diamond.csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Another silly question
Message-ID: <10270@socslgw.csl.sony.JUNET>
Date: 23 May 89 02:19:38 GMT
References: <17812@cup.portal.com> <607@kl-cs.UUCP> <749@mccc.UUCP> <1989May19.154248.426@utzoo.uucp> <755@mccc.UUCP> <1989May21.205928.26064@utzoo.uucp>
Sender: news@csl.sony.JUNET
Reply-To: diamond@csl.sony.junet (Norman Diamond)
Organization: Sony Computer Science Laboratory Inc., Tokyo, Japan
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In article <755@mccc.UUCP> pjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) writes:

>>Can you name a C compiler that was written by a
>>competent compiler writer?

In article <1989May21.205928.26064@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:

>Sometimes I think the only one was Dennis Ritchie's original pdp11 compiler,
>with the original PCC perhaps a borderline case.

Well, in terms of the original question ...
>And lest there be any
>doubts about the matter, both of them convert "a[i]" to "*(a+i)" as they
>parse, so the code for the two expressions is necessarily identical.  (I
>went and looked at the compiler sources to be sure.)
... yes it's encouraging to see that they were competent.

Now about PCC.  Do you really mean that all those bugs were inserted
into PCC after the original?  I suppose it's possible.  I don't have
the original.  But some of those bugs look pretty old.  How portable
is it to dereference the null pointer?  I'm amazed that the thing runs
(except of course for where it doesn't run).

--
Norman Diamond, Sony Computer Science Lab (diamond%csl.sony.co.jp@relay.cs.net)
  The above opinions are my own.   |  Why are programmers criticized for
  If they're also your opinions,   |  re-implementing the wheel, when car
  you're infringing my copyright.  |  manufacturers are praised for it?