Comment by g15jv2dp
12 days ago
I don't really see what's "elegant" about the code, could you elaborate? (This isn't a jab at GP. I'm just curious about what I'm not seeing.)
12 days ago
I don't really see what's "elegant" about the code, could you elaborate? (This isn't a jab at GP. I'm just curious about what I'm not seeing.)
You might want to compare it to the "proper" version of the inline asm code, from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40703314
Modern C is neither "low-level" or "high-level". It's defined for an abstract machine where integers can't overflow, null pointers can't be referenced, etc. And unless you follow all the rules, and add proper annotations for things like inline assembly, the compiler is free to do anything to your code.
The one advantage to this approach is that modern compilers can turn megabytes of auto-generated crap produced by string substitution macros into halfway decent machine language.
(And I freely admit that specifically Turbo Pascal produced really bad code, worse even than C compilers at the time, but the syntax is oh so much nicer IMHO)
I believe that MSVC inline asm allows referencing variables in the asm as it can parse and understand the asm (at least before they got rid of inline asm completely for 64 bit code).
AFAIK GCC does not attempt to parse the asm by design, as it is meant to be used for code that the compiler might not understand, so you have to describe input, outputs and side effects with annotations.
That isn't proper C, rather GCC and clang dialects of inline Assembly.
I think its elegant because the distinction between Pascal and Assembly is made using the Pascal asm .. end; keywords, and in that block one can also access the Pascal variables without much fuss involving the assembler.
I find that really nice to read and to look at, whereas the examples given in the original article are prone to syntax overload, what with all the intermixing - for example, the variable declarations having what 'look' like attributes - but are really assembly instructions, emitted.
I guess one would have had to have enjoyed writing Turbo Pascal code, though, to see this particular aesthetic. A lot of folks do, some don't ..