[avr-gcc-list] mass stupidity with registers and longs

[Curtis Maloney]

I give up.  I've been trying to shift 4 chars into an unsigned long, but can't 
stop GCC 3.4.1 (what's shipped with the latest WinAVR) from sign extending 
values, let alone producing sane code.

I've tried -Os, -O2, -O3, with and without -fnew-ra... the asm varies, but is 
generaly crap.

now, if I have:
        extern char a[4];
        unsigned long ul;

        ul = ( (unsigned)a[0] << 8 ) | (unsigned)a[1];

why would it be sign extending a[0] and a[1] when they're cast to unsigneds?
And then why doesn't the code optimiser see to just mov rX, a[1]; mov rX+1,a[0] 
?

I tried casts on casts on casts... everything I could think of to get better 
code, and it just did not improve.

Am I missing something, or do I just need to get gcc 3.4.3?  If so, is anyone 
lurking here involved with WinAVR, and can tell me when the next update might 
happen?

--
Curtis Maloney