OT (partially): about promotion of integers

[H. S. Teoh]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:35:39AM -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/11/12 11:29 AM, eles wrote:
> >>There's a lot to be discussed on the issue. A few quick thoughts:
> >>
> >>* 32-bit integers are a sweet spot for CPU architectures. There's
> >>rarely a provision for 16- or 8-bit operations; the action is at 32-
> >>or 64-bit.
> >
> >Speed can be still optimized by the compiler, behind the scenes. The
> >approach does not asks the compiler to promote everything to
> >widest-integral, but to do the job "as if". Currently, the choice of
> >int-C as the fastest-integral instead of widest-integral move the
> >burden from the compiler to the user.
> 
> Agreed. But then that's one of them "sufficiently smart compiler"
> arguments. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SufficientlySmartCompiler
[...]

A sufficiently smart compiler can solve the halting problem. ;-)


T

-- 
Obviously, some things aren't very obvious.