Hi Peter, Hugh Chief, Howdy the list.
I think one good reason why peoples interested in programming should know a bit about compilers is that they hence have an idea how to write their code so that the compilated version of it won't be too bad.
I know damn shit about compilers, but there is this situation I am always perplex about when facing it. Suppose "call" is a big complicated function, say, a theta(2**n) one, really the big one. How will GPC translate the following line into machine code?
if call(a)=1 or call(a)=2 then ...
Will it call two times the function? Or will it by itself do the simplification? Should we by ourselves complicate our way of writting code in defining another variable to store in advance the result of call(a)?
Cheers (and thanks Peter for your proposal of implementing set of records, I use something near it, it works fine).
F.P.L