From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: steffen@sdaoden.eu (Steffen Nurpmeso)
Date: Wed, 04 Jan 2017 18:38:04 +0100
Subject: [TUHS] Unix stories
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Message-ID: <20170104173804.xrkvjknBx%steffen@sdaoden.eu>

"Ron Natalie" <ron at ronnatalie.com> wrote:
 |There's a trademark between allowing the compiler to reorder things \
 |and having a defined order of operations.
 |Steps like that are well-defined in Java for instance.   C lets the \
 |compiler do what it sees fit.
 |
 |Note that it's not necessarily any better in assembler.    There are \
 |RISC architectures where load-followed-by-store and vice versa may \
 |not always be valid if done in quick succession.    Requiring the compiler \
 |to insert sequence points typically wastes a lot of cycles.    Assembler \
 |programmers tend to think about what they are doing, the C compiler \
 |tries to do some of this on its own and its not clairvoyant.

I have just read again Clive Feather's ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14 N925
draft on sequence points, and i seem to be wrong about especially
the shown exampl,e and Random knew that earlier.  I first read
that document in the context of aliasing issues a few years back,
when i saw some BSD changesets fly by, and i remember a thread on
a FreeBSD list, too, where objects backing pointers could no
longer be accessed directly, but first need to be copied over to
some -- then newly introduced -- local scope storage before being
used, because of new aliasing rules of the C language.  It seems
i hyperventilated in the sequence point document back then.

--steffen