Re: union type is evil, redux

Valdis> And given that they apparently cited chapter-and-verse to Valdis> justify their refusal, I have to consider the GCC people Valdis> totally in the right on this one. "Totally" is a bit extreme. Sometimes the standard is broken. And if they wanted to, the standard permits treating whatever it is they do as an optional optimization, just as they do "ANSI aliasing" and "frame pointers" and such, and guaranteeing sanity as a GCC extension if that option is not set. Valdis> remember that if the compiler can screw us by reordering Valdis> code, it can screw us by reordering the explicit Valdis> temporaries unless you flag them as 'volatile' (otherwise Valdis> it can screw up by optimizing them into total Valdis> non-existence). Since when? AFAIK, explicit temporaries guarantee order of evaluation for a given expression. Has that changed in the C-late-90s standards? separate evaluations" problem (ie, on opposite sides of the = sign). Valdis> And quite frankly, I'd much rather know the gcc people are Valdis> devoting their limited resources to fixing out-and-out Valdis> *bugs* than trying to "fix" something with unspecified Valdis> semantics. Oh, I mostly agree. Valdis> There's always option 2: Heave it over the side. ;) Well, except for you, all the "I'm with the GCC team" posters also (implicitly or explicitly) object to dropping union type. Ben was just frothing about the GCC team, it had no semantic content AFAICT (ie, he has no intent of following up with a GCC bug report). He just wants union type deprecated. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.