[libc-alpha] Re: [open-source] Re: Wish for 2002 ...

[Kaz Kylheku]

On Sat, 12 Jan 2002, Sandy Harris wrote:
> "Martin v. Loewis" wrote:
> 
> > Notice that -liberty offers this as concat(const char* first, ...).
> 
> That strikes me as a function worth having, though perhaps not in standard
> libraries.

I'd rather have the compiler analyze *printf format strings and
generate code.  There is no reason why 

  snprintf(d, sizeof d, "%s%s", s1, s2)

can't be compiled into calls to some compiler run-time support
function that catenates directly.

The GNU compiler can already analyze the format string for the purpose
of error checking; the next obvious step is code generation.

In priciple, a compiled sprintf can do anything which a variable-argument
concat can do, just as efficiently.