Why bring these ancient home computer platforms into play? Those were totally different to program for. Why not compare a C compiler from 1998 to one from 2018, on x86 (no SSE of course)? C compilers
have gotten better, but not spectacularly.
>> The code that current C compilers don't generate, many times is related to taking advantage of UB
Compilers are really smart in optimizing things that aren't relevant to the real world.
For example, this code would reduce to "return 32" in most modern compilers:
int return32(){
int x=1;
for (int i=0; i<5; i++){
x*=2;
}
return x;
}
Does that make impact in real-world code? Almost certainly not, it's a contrived case. Most UB cases fall into the same category.
>> They also generate extra code for handling stuff like floating point emulation though.
Not necessarily.
>> The code that current C compilers don't generate, many times is related to taking advantage of UB
Compilers are really smart in optimizing things that aren't relevant to the real world.
For example, this code would reduce to "return 32" in most modern compilers:
Does that make impact in real-world code? Almost certainly not, it's a contrived case. Most UB cases fall into the same category.>> They also generate extra code for handling stuff like floating point emulation though.
Not necessarily.