code optimizers (was Re: induction variable optimization)

[madd at bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP]

In article <531 at bobkat.UUCP> m5d at bobkat.UUCP (Mike McNally (dlsh)) writes:
>I once heard a story from a compiler deity in which some dude wrote a
>FORTRAN source code optimizer.  It read FORTRAN source and produced
>FORTRAN source which was "better".  It supposedly did better than the
>IBM G (or H, whatever the heavily optimizing IBM FORTRAN compiler was
>called) optimizer.  This could be fiction.

We have a prof. who once wrote a disassembler in lisp that produced
better source code than the original programmer.  The program was
used locally to get source to programs so that they could be patched
to run on our local OS.  He took it off the system when people started
using it to steal programs.

(This is just random information)

jim frost
madd at bucsf.bu.edu
..!harvard!bu-cs!bucsf!madd