volatile [was: GCC warnings for unused global variables]

[Fergus Henderson]

On 08-May-2003, Gabriel Dos Reis <gdr@integrable-solutions.net> wrote:
> Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU> writes:
> | The C++ committee was not too worried about nailing down the semantics
> | of volatile for class objects, since they did not expect it to be used
> | (or useful) for class objects.
> 
> This statement is clearly wrong

Perhaps I should have said "The C++ committee members who I spoke to at
the Valley Forge meeting, when the Core working group was considering
object lifetime issues" rather than generalizing to the C++ committee
as a whole.  I only attended one committee meeting, and I did not get
a chance to speak with every committee member.  But the statement above
is my memory of the concensus in the Core working group at that time.

> since the committee does consider
> member functions that are volatile-qualified which, for one thing, is
> an indication that volatile was expected to be used with classes.

I think that was more for orthogonality and simplicity than because
they expected it to be used or useful.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne         |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.