Of my view that traditional base register-displacement coding idioms
are, at best, obsolescent, Shmuel wrote

<begin extract>
Nonsense; they're still needed for referring to data in dynamic
storage. My general rule on such matters is that you have to cut the
bird at the joints.
</end extract>

which remarks prompt me to two [rhetorical] questions.  How much code
is Shmuel in fact writing these days?  Does he in fact understand the
difference between the words 'obsolescent' and 'obsolete'?

That there are exiguous residual uses for base registers may be
conceded, although 'access to data in dynamic storage' is a very poor
description of the principal one.

Auden spoke of the privations of the poor, "to which they are fairly
accustomed", and I am entirely accustomed to Shmuel's fulminations,
which are largely predictable.  I should not, however, wish other
readers to take this one seriously.  It is at once wrong and
wrong-headed.

John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA

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