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Comment on What Have We Learned from the PDP-11?parent

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Not quite, unfortunately. In assembly language, you don't have to fear that your compiler optimizes out clearing cryptographic keys out of memory at the end of a function.

In assembly, you don't have to worry about pesky optimizations speeding up your code at all. A similar effect can be achieved in C by not manually enabling optimizations.

"A similar effect can be achieved in C by not manually enabling optimizations."

Good luck with that.

Nor in K&R C. Or even early ANSI-C. This whole "we can use undefined behavior to "optimize" away half your program" idea is fairly new.

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