> When it is not necessary to switch RAM banks, the PIC's architecture is
> generally quite nice.
I agree, especially for the 14 bits.

> RAM banking, of course, causes most ideas of niceness to go out the
window.
Your examples show this: the nice 2-instruction
   if ! a then b++
explodes to 5 instructions (even without code paging).

> Still, while I can understand the PIC's banking making it harder for
comp-
> ilers to produce GOOD code, I still don't see why they should have
trouble
> producing CORRECT code [btw, the CCS compiler can even do the above types
> of rewrites even on code written with inline assembly].
Producing coorect but inefficient code is not the problem.
The bugs creep in when trying to be clever....

Wouter.