Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!hercules!sparkyfs!zodiac!anders@penguin
From: anders@penguin (Anders Wallgren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: MPW compiler bugs (was: interface war)
Message-ID: <10898@zodiac.ADS.COM>
Date: 15 Feb 90 19:31:27 GMT
References: <1990Feb14.004350.14475@oracle.com> <1990Feb14.185938.854@intercon.com>
Sender: news@zodiac.ADS.COM
Reply-To: anders@penguin (Anders Wallgren)
Organization: Verity
Lines: 29
In-reply-to: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker)

Of course we shouldn't forget that MPW C and C++ are not compatible.
CFront does not optimize enums, whereas the C compiler does, which
causes a lot of problems.  According to Apple there is no way to get
around this:

"When CFront compiles your code, although it uses the same C compiler,
it has already tokenized its input and performed its own version of
optimization at that level.  ...it would be a good idea if all C
compilers on that same platform produced interchangeable optimized
code but this is unfortunately not the case here...  You will not be
able to mix code between CFront and MPW C at this time without adding
glue code to fix up the differences.  Your comments will, however, be
brought to the attention of the compilers group and, hopefully, this
incompatibility will not always be true."

1.  Perhaps it should be suggested to Apple's compiler group that they
    should spend more time testing their compilers and less time
    inventing infantile error messages.

2.  Better yet, perhaps they should provide switches to turn off these
    optimizations so that we can get around bugs and
    'incompatibilities.'

3.  The thing that really steams me is that there's a switch to CFront
    to turn off the optimization that it never does, but no switch to
    the MPW C compiler to turn off the optimization that it always
    does.

Anders