Re: Open-Source and programming style

[kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner)]

In article <m27lwwrzb2.fsf@wf-rch.cirr.com> minyard@acm.org writes:
>Even if part of a piece of software is well-understood, it doesn't
>mean that the whole thing is.  For instance, for gcc, the front-end
>was well defined but the back-end is, well, quite unique.  And quite
>powerful, too, once you understand it.  So the front-end design had a
>defined specification but the back end is RMS's own scheme.  At least
>that's how I understand it, I don't think it was stolen from anywhere.

Well, it wasn't "stolen" and there were plenty of new concepts in the GCC
back end, but as RMS says in the GCC manual:

    The idea of using RTL and some of the optimization ideas came from the
    program PO written at the University of Arizona by Jack Davidson and
    Christopher Fraser.  See ``Register Allocation and Exhaustive Peephole
    Optimization'', Software Practice and Experience 14 (9), Sept. 1984,
    857-866.