Re: type based aliasing again

[Richard Stallman <rms AT gnu dot org>]

    Like it or not, people will come to depend on this feature, 

My proposal is not a feature.  When you call it a "feature", you're
not considering the proposal I made.

The argument about "people depending on this" is flawed
in the idea that such dependency would be due to my proposal.
It has already happened, and it is still happening.

People already depend on the invalid code we are talking about.  It
exists in various programs today.

People may also be writing more such code even today.  With GCC 2.95,
such code will always work as expected if -O0 is used, and that may
even be true if -O1 is used.

In GCC 2.95, when -fstrict-aliasing is used, some of these cases work
as expected, and some will not.  With my proposal, that would still be
the overall situation.  The only difference would be that a larger
fraction of them would work as expected.

This difference would reduce the pain caused today, but as regards the
potential problems you are worried about, it would not change things
much.