Re: Have you ever had a bug caused by...

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Never said I was in favor of it - just observing that the C design
philosophy was to make an extremely simple compiler that didn't put in
anything you didn't specifically create. It is really a high level
assembler.

Designing in C, I find myself utilizing the Harley Davidson Design
Principle: "If it breaks, make it bigger. If it sticks out, chrome it!" :-)

I think that for easily 75% or more of the programs ever written in the
world today, a compiler could safely leave in all sorts of range checks and
other runtime safety features and nobody would ever notice they were there
from a performance standpoint. If a compiler can be smart enough to
eliminate some of the checks on its own - great! If the compiler will let me
turn them off when I might be in those 25% of the cases where it matters,
fine! Ada certainly makes all of that possible.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"John English" <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3BD7DF3B.1E5F435B@brighton.ac.uk...
>
> Odd, considering how much easier it is for a compiler to optimise out
> unnecessary range checks than for a human to try and identify safe
> situations and leave out the checks... It's easier for a human to wrap
> the variable access in a function which always range checks and which
> the compiler can't optimise away, or to omit checking altogether.
>