On 12/8/2013 4:35 AM, ponce wrote:
3. Function inlining has generally been shown to be of tremendous value in
optimization. D has access to all the source code in the program, or at least
as much as you're willing to show it, and can inline across modules. C cannot
inline functions unless they appear in the same module or in .h files. It's a
rare practice to push many functions into .h files. Of course, there are now
linkers that can do whole program optimization for C, but those are kind of
herculean efforts to work around that C limitation of being able to see only
one module at a time.
This point is not entirely accurate. While the C model is generally harmful with
inlining, with the Intel C++ compiler you can absolutely rely on cross-module
inlining when doing global optimization. I don't know how it works, but all out
tiny functions hidden in separate translation units get inlined.
I believe this is the linker thing I mentioned at work.
