Re: MS/CW-style inline assembly for GCC

[Peter Barada <peter at the-baradas dot com>]

>>I would.  The gcc syntax lets me say what I want in a clear and
>>unambiguous manner.  For me the gcc asm syntax, when I first started
>>using it back in 1990 on the 68k, was a breath of fresh air.  There is
>>no guesswork about what is going to happen.  You say what you want,
>>and the compiler handles the details you don't want to worry about.
>>
>Heh, you're hardly representative of the user population! I'll bet
>you cheated and looked at the compiler sources too... :-)

As a user, I learned a back around version 1.34 how to write m68k asms
using just the provided compiler documentation.  I have to admit that
better documentation would have made it a whole lot easier, but it
wasn't all that difficult to figure out what was going on.  A few
cycles of try-n-see what comes out of the compiler was all it took to
figure things out where the documentation wasn't clear.

If you think the documentation needs help in this area, point out the
deficiencies so people can address them.

>The GCC syntax was a cheap quickie hack thrown in nearly twenty
>years ago and hardly improved since then, even though empirically
>it's one of the leading causes of bugs and problems with using GCC.
>It may suit you just fine, but most users only put up with it
>because they have no alternative.

Extremely few users of gcc actually *write* asm code so your claim of it
being a 'leading cause of bugs' is a gross exaggeration.

-- 
Peter Barada
peter@the-baradas.com