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Postings from November 1999
I propose a small change to pp.c strictly for the sake of readability. I noticed recently that, in the functions pp_pack and pp_unpack, 'pat', which is a character pointer stored in a register, is reused in a few places for a completely different purpose: it points not to the pack/unpack pattern but to the data. I take it that this was done in order to borrow the register, but it seems bad to me for these reasons: (a) the technique may be confusing; (b) on most RISC machines, there should be plenty of registers to go around, so you could just ask for another one; (c) there's no guarantee that pat will be stored in a register anyhow; and (d) any gain in speed that comes from using a register is probably tiny and must be weighed against the reduced readability. I therefore propose that pat be left alone and that a new pointer be defined to point to the input data in these places. My proposed changes are attached in diff format. The original file was from version 5.005_03. Your comments are welcome. (See attached file: ppdiff.txt)Thread Next