Re: INLINE: wtf?

Hrvoje> OK, say I want to inline a function for efficiency. A typical example Hrvoje> is digit_to_number() in data.c. However, saying Hrvoje> statc INLINE int Hrvoje> digit_to_number ... Hrvoje> does not appear to work, because INLINE does some demented tricks with Hrvoje> extern and stuff. Hrvoje> How do I turn that junk off and simply say that I want this function Hrvoje> to be inlined, in a portable way (portable as in "ignore it on Hrvoje> compilers that don't support the `inline' keyword)? Currently all explicitly inline functions exist only in header files, where they are defined via INLINE, which takes care of the thorny issues of multiple definitions of the function in gcc via inline.c. For functions only used in a .c file, you could do (untested) static inline int digit_to_number (int character, int base) One reason this has never been done is that it should be unnecessary with most modern compilers at sufficient levels of optimizations. Both gcc -O3 and Sun cc -xO4 do inlining of static functions automatically. In fact, inline, like register, is merely a hint to the compiler. Are you sure you know better than the compiler whether inlining digit_to_number is worth it? Actually, in this case, both you and the compiler should be able to figure it out, since it's trivial. # pgcc optimized build: $ nm data.o | g digit_to_number $ # pgcc debug build: $ nm data.o | g digit_to_number 00003ea0 t digit_to_number $ We should make -O3 the default optimization flag for gcc. In fact, I submitted a patch that did this, but Steve REJECTED it. Martin