Brian Hurt wrote:

> I note with humor that the big new optimization in GCC is the SSA-Tree 
> form- "Single Static Assignment".  The idea behind SSA is that you can 
> only assign a variable a value when you create it, you can not change it 
> latter.  Once you express C++ in SSA, it's a lot easier to apply a lot of 
> optimizations to it.  Of course, the more I look at SSA, the more it looks 
> like a functional language to me.  

The thought has occurred to others, as well.  See
www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/ssafun.pdf

  - ken