Re: no_new_pseudos

[Kenneth Zadeck <zadeck at naturalbridge dot com>]

Richard Sandiford wrote:
> David Edelsohn <dje@watson.ibm.com> writes:
>   
>> 	I think the proposal is to get the semantics right first and then
>> fix the syntax, not just leave the long, cumbersome flag.
>>
>> 	Creating a macro or alias could lead to confusion and creates an
>> opportunity for divergence.
>>     
>
> I don't understand what you mean by the second sentence.  The purpose of
> the macro or alias is precisely to define what the agreed semantics are
> (just as no_new_pseudos does now).  My main concern...
>   

>From my point of view, my purpose to do this was to get all of the
unnecessary garbage out of the middle end AND TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING
STILL WORKED!


>   
>> 	Once this initial find-and-replace substitution is done, I am sure
>> that we all will be able to agree on way to rationalize the flags, but we
>> do not need to make all of the changes simultaneously.
>>     
>
> ...was that it seems odd to remove an abstraction if we're intending
> to add it back again (and it wasn't clear to me before that we _were_
> intending to add it back again).  But if Kenny prefers to do it that
> way -- and is indeed intending to "fix the syntax" -- then that's fine.
>
>   
I did the change this way because it is easy to clean up later and i
happen to really dislike derived variables.  Over time, these tend to be
misused and redefined because the foo backend just needed it to be a
"little bit" different.

In retrospect, I was perhaps not the best person to do this change
because I do not yet have the experience to look at the backends and
simplify them.  I think that ian's point is that had that been done,
(and of course it can still be done), the justification for derived
variables would have been less.

> I liked Dave's suggestion too FWIW.
>
> Richard
>