11 Dec
2009
11 Dec
'09
2:57 p.m.
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:46 AM, Andrew Coppin
On the other hand, turn up the optimisation settings on a C compiler high enough and the program breaks.
Not if you write actual C as specified by the standard. In fact, these days gcc internally converts your program to SSA form, which is essentially pure functional code. (See here for an explanation: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/ssafun.ps) The reason is exactly as you say: the purer the code, the easier it is to reason about it. -- Dan