On 08/04/2009 04:29, Jim Brain wrote:
John Floren wrote:
GCC is definitely not the most enlightened compiler out there.
Is there some context around that statement?
It seems a pretty solid compiler to me, and I use it on 3 targets, one
of which is a microcontroller.
gcc is designed around the x86 family, and on a good day produces decent
code for that family. Use it to generate code for a different
endianness or different architecture and it "does less well". Take code
written for gcc's foibles and compile it with another good compiler, and
see how many complaints the other compiler makes about code that gcc
lets by.
The speed and (in)efficiency might not be apparent unless you have
something else to compare it with, but for SGIs and Suns, I do. Last
time I used gcc to compile something for an SGI, it took longer to do
the compilation (not counting the time to find gcc-compatible
libraries), and the resulting code was significantly larger and
significantly slower than the result from SGI's compiler.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York