From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7f3ed9f7030da79b X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: kenner@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) Subject: Re: Open-Source and programming style Date: 1998/11/19 Message-ID: <732b7b$dct$1@news.nyu.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 413691604 References: <364f3bbe.214201@SantaClara01.news.InterNex.Net> X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.nyu.edu X-Trace: news.nyu.edu 911519787 13725 (None) 128.122.140.194 Organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-11-19T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article 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.