Re: type based aliasing again

[Richard Stallman <rms at gnu dot org>]

    The very idea that compiler should make an educated guess and decide 
    which options to apply to my code gives me shudder. 

No one has proposed this.

    The software should 
    do what I say, no more and no less.

The issue here is with cases where it takes some interpretation to
decide what the code "says".  There is more than one legitimate
interpretation, and the question is, should we make a certain effort
to choose the one that the code's author probably had in mind.

    In my experience, the smarter software is, the closer it is to
    becoming unusable.

I agree with you, for some questions--I think it is bad for software to
be written based on the assumption that it is smarter than the user
who is operating it, or to disbelieve that the user means what he says.
When the input has a clear meaning, software should obey it.

But the C language is such that not every program has a clearly
defined meaning.  Using a little intelligence to figure out what
the code probably meant is not disobedience, it is a more careful
kind of obedience.