sergio masci wrote:

> Thank you Olin, I had considered that Gerhard was maybe talking about 
> intrinsic functions. 

Why don't you just read what I wrote rather than trying to guess? I
pretty much wrote what I meant. If I had meant intrinsics, I'd have
written about intrinsics.

> Then I cottened on to the fact that what he was actually saying is
> that if a compiler could analyse all the source (including that of
> the libraries) then it would be able to extract all the info needed
> to make a non-intrinsic function intrinsic.

No, I never said this. I said that if a library is a /standard/ library
(and I have mentioned this word "standard" a few times; you didn't seem
to pick up on this), the compiler "knows" about the intent of a
function, not any different than it "knows" about the intent of a
language construct. (The intent is a concept that you brought in as
being important, and I don't see what's the difference between a
standardized built-in construct and a standardized library in terms of
"knowing" about the intent.)

The thing about having the lib available in source code is in addition
to this, and about other optimizations (probably lower level than those
that deal with intent).

Gerhard
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