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by pcwalton 4852 days ago
I'm not sure about that. Not using "restrict" properly can lead to extremely hard-to-diagnose errors which can only be resolved by reading the generated assembler. I've seen several C programs that use "restrict" everywhere as a magic "go faster" device without understanding what it means...

The automatic conversions in JavaScript and PHP seem pretty harmless by comparison.

1 comments

>Not using "restrict" properly can lead to extremely hard-to-diagnose errors

But "restrict" is a low-level micro-optimization, those tend to be tricky. I don't think a sane C programmer would sprinkle that keyword all across the source base, because as you have pointed out it can cause hard-to-diagnose errors.

In contrast, the automatic conversions in JavaScript and PHP are an "always on" feature you cannot avoid.