Re: suppress_checking

[Richard Stallman]

    > We're interested in GCC, not particularly in "decent optimizing
    > compilers".  Does GCC in fact optimize these cases?

    Certainly GCC would be the main one I'd care about performance-wise,  
    and as far as I'm concerned sets the standard for "decent optimizing  
    compilers", but I've heard people do sometimes use other compilers. :-)

Our priorities do not servo on what people use.  Emacs is part of the
GNU system, so the GNU system is the platform that carries the most
weight for our decisions.  Thus, if a certain choice is bad for use
with GCC and good for use with every other compiler, we won't do it.
That's the way every GNU package should be developed.

    ...  Okay, I just ran a quick test on my Mac (powerpc, Apple-flavored  
    gcc 4.0.1).  The disassembly of a test function that included "if  
    (STRINGP (s)) return SDATA (s);", where "s" was an argument to the  
    function, showed the test was performed once, and the "die" call  
    wasn't present at all.

That is good.