volatile [was: GCC warnings for unused global variables]

[Mike Stump]

On Saturday, May 3, 2003, at 09:50 AM, Michael Eager wrote:
> When I was on the C++ Standards Committee, I submitted a proposal which
> was intended to make volatile well defined and explicit, rather than 
> use the
> vague definition inherited from C.  Unfortunately, the proposal was not
> adopted.  A large part of the committee felt that volatile was an 
> obscure
> feature which did not need clarification.  The small part of the 
> committee
> which thought that volatile was important had the opinion that it 
> would be
> impossible (or at least very difficult) to define it precisely, 
> although it
> appeared that we all agreed on the same correct behavior for volatile.

Hum.  My memory could be fading here, but I thought I was against it 
because there was at least one wrong thing (IMHO) in how you defined it 
at the time, and I thought the status quo was better than a status 
wrong.

Anyway, I think it would be great if you'd put up your work on volatile 
up on a web site, and solicit feedback, and fix/expand/explain it for 
folks.  If the nits of it are fixed, I think it would be good to have 
in the language standards for C/C++.  Also, we can link it from the gcc 
web site for those that would like a more complete explanation of 
volatile.