Optimization and language level

[Henry Spencer]

> ...  But then, perhaps I shouldn't say 'realize' as
> it appears that many partisans of a (dare I mention it?)  well-known PDP-7
> operating system still cling tenaciously to its systems programming language's
> virtual lack of implementation-independent semantics...

Those of us partisans who long ago stopped counting the number of different
machines that Unix will run on are snickering at this.  C's semantics seem
to be implementation-independent enough that the same code runs on everything
from an 8088 to a Cray...

> ... (really, now, is C much
> higher level than assembly language?).

Name one assembly language that will run on both (say) a PDP11 and a 370.
Not a random example; our local text editor runs on those machines among
a number of others.  It's written in, you guessed it, C.
-- 
	"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry