Re: Unit at time compilation mode III

[Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr at integrable-solutions dot net>]

Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com> writes:

| > On Feb 13, 2003, Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com> wrote:
| > 
| > > Precisely why I'm not keen on "unit-at-once" -- it's not clear what the 
| > > "unit" is.
| > 
| > The C and C++ standards talk about translation units.  I always read
| > `unit' here as shorthand for that.
| > 
| > >    - function-at-once   intra-function optimization
| > >    - file-at-once       optimize over everything in the "file"
| > >    - all-at-once        optimize over all files on the command line
| > 
| > file would be wrong, since you'll seldom see a translation unit that
| > draws code from a single file (i.e., that doesn't #include anything
| > else).
| 
| Maybe the standards do, but I've rarely if ever seen normal users talking 
| about compiling compilation units.  They talk about compiling "files".  

I have already seen existing compilers use the term "translation unit".
On the other hand, the term "file" is really misleading gievn the
compilation model of C and C++.  I is definitely not appropriate for C
and C++.  (Maybe it is appropriate for Java).

| I've never known a user complain about the fact that when they compile a 
| file foo.c the contents of the files it included were also compiled :-)

Then, that just means you aren't sufficiently familiar with users
suffering nightmarres coming from compiling template-based codes :-)
Welcome to C++.

-- Gaby