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GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals

This manual documents the internals of the GNU compilers, including how to port them to new targets and some information about how to write front ends for new languages. It corresponds to GCC version . The use of the GNU compilers is documented in a separate manual. See section `Introduction' in Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).

This manual is mainly a reference manual rather than a tutorial. It discusses how to contribute to GCC (see section 1. Contributing to GCC Development), the characteristics of the machines supported by GCC as hosts and targets (see section 2. GCC and Portability), how GCC relates to the ABIs on such systems (see section 3. Interfacing to GCC Output), and the characteristics of the languages for which GCC front ends are written (see section 4. Language Front Ends in GCC). It then describes the GCC source tree structure and build system, some of the interfaces to GCC front ends, and how support for a target system is implemented in GCC.

Additional tutorial information is linked to from http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html.

1. Contributing to GCC Development  How to contribute to testing and developing GCC.
2. GCC and Portability  Goals of GCC's portability features.
3. Interfacing to GCC Output  Function-call interface of GCC output.
4. Language Front Ends in GCC  Languages for which GCC front ends are written.
5. Source Tree Structure and Build System  GCC source tree structure and build system.
6. Passes and Files of the Compiler  Order of passes, what they do, and what each file is for.
7. Trees: The intermediate representation used by the C and C++ front ends  The source representation used by the C and C++ front ends.
8. RTL Representation  The intermediate representation that most passes work on.
9. Machine Descriptions  How to write machine description instruction patterns.
10. Target Description Macros and Functions  How to write the machine description C macros and functions.
11. Host Configuration Headers  Writing the `xm-machine.h' file.
12. Makefile Fragments  Writing the `t-target' and `x-host' files.
13. collect2  How collect2 works; how it finds ld.
14. Standard Header File Directories  Understanding the standard header file directories.

The GNU Project and GNU/Linux  

Contributors to GCC  People who have contributed to GCC.

Option Index  Index to command line options.
Index  Index of concepts and symbol names.


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1. Contributing to GCC Development

If you would like to help pretest GCC releases to assure they work well, our current development sources are available by CVS (see http://gcc.gnu.org/cvs.html). Source and binary snapshots are also available for FTP; see http://gcc.gnu.org/snapshots.html.

If you would like to work on improvements to GCC, please read the advice at these URLs:

 
http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/contributewhy.html

for information on how to make useful contributions and avoid duplication of effort. Suggested projects are listed at http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/.


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2. GCC and Portability

The main goal of GCC was to make a good, fast compiler for machines in the class that the GNU system aims to run on: 32-bit machines that address 8-bit bytes and have several general registers. Elegance, theoretical power and simplicity are only secondary.

GCC gets most of the information about the target machine from a machine description which gives an algebraic formula for each of the machine's instructions. This is a very clean way to describe the target. But when the compiler needs information that is difficult to express in this fashion, I have not hesitated to define an ad-hoc parameter to the machine description. The purpose of portability is to reduce the total work needed on the compiler; it was not of interest for its own sake.

GCC does not contain machine dependent code, but it does contain code that depends on machine parameters such as endianness (whether the most significant byte has the highest or lowest address of the bytes in a word) and the availability of autoincrement addressing. In the RTL-generation pass, it is often necessary to have multiple strategies for generating code for a particular kind of syntax tree, strategies that are usable for different combinations of parameters. Often I have not tried to address all possible cases, but only the common ones or only the ones that I have encountered. As a result, a new target may require additional strategies. You will know if this happens because the compiler will call abort. Fortunately, the new strategies can be added in a machine-independent fashion, and will affect only the target machines that need them.


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3. Interfacing to GCC Output

GCC is normally configured to use the same function calling convention normally in use on the target system. This is done with the machine-description macros described (see section 10. Target Description Macros and Functions).

However, returning of structure and union values is done differently on some target machines. As a result, functions compiled with PCC returning such types cannot be called from code compiled with GCC, and vice versa. This does not cause trouble often because few Unix library routines return structures or unions.

GCC code returns structures and unions that are 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes long in the same registers used for int or double return values. (GCC typically allocates variables of such types in registers also.) Structures and unions of other sizes are returned by storing them into an address passed by the caller (usually in a register). The machine-description macros STRUCT_VALUE and STRUCT_INCOMING_VALUE tell GCC where to pass this address.

By contrast, PCC on most target machines returns structures and unions of any size by copying the data into an area of static storage, and then returning the address of that storage as if it were a pointer value. The caller must copy the data from that memory area to the place where the value is wanted. This is slower than the method used by GCC, and fails to be reentrant.

On some target machines, such as RISC machines and the 80386, the standard system convention is to pass to the subroutine the address of where to return the value. On these machines, GCC has been configured to be compatible with the standard compiler, when this method is used. It may not be compatible for structures of 1, 2, 4 or 8 bytes.

GCC uses the system's standard convention for passing arguments. On some machines, the first few arguments are passed in registers; in others, all are passed on the stack. It would be possible to use registers for argument passing on any machine, and this would probably result in a significant speedup. But the result would be complete incompatibility with code that follows the standard convention. So this change is practical only if you are switching to GCC as the sole C compiler for the system. We may implement register argument passing on certain machines once we have a complete GNU system so that we can compile the libraries with GCC.

On some machines (particularly the Sparc), certain types of arguments are passed "by invisible reference". This means that the value is stored in memory, and the address of the memory location is passed to the subroutine.

If you use longjmp, beware of automatic variables. ISO C says that automatic variables that are not declared volatile have undefined values after a longjmp. And this is all GCC promises to do, because it is very difficult to restore register variables correctly, and one of GCC's features is that it can put variables in registers without your asking it to.

If you want a variable to be unaltered by longjmp, and you don't want to write volatile because old C compilers don't accept it, just take the address of the variable. If a variable's address is ever taken, even if just to compute it and ignore it, then the variable cannot go in a register:

 
{
  int careful;
  &careful;
  ...
}

Code compiled with GCC may call certain library routines. Most of them handle arithmetic for which there are no instructions. This includes multiply and divide on some machines, and floating point operations on any machine for which floating point support is disabled with `-msoft-float'. Some standard parts of the C library, such as bcopy or memcpy, are also called automatically. The usual function call interface is used for calling the library routines.

Some of these routines can be defined in mostly machine-independent C; they appear in `libgcc2.c'. Others must be hand-written in assembly language for each processor. Wherever they are defined, they are compiled into the support library, `libgcc.a', which is automatically searched when you link programs with GCC.


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4. Language Front Ends in GCC

The interface to front ends for languages in GCC, and in particular the tree structure (see section 7. Trees: The intermediate representation used by the C and C++ front ends), was initially designed for C, and many aspects of it are still somewhat biased towards C and C-like languages. It is, however, reasonably well suited to other procedural languages, and front ends for many such languages have been written for GCC.

Writing a compiler as a front end for GCC, rather than compiling directly to assembler or generating C code which is then compiled by GCC, has several advantages:

Because of the advantages of writing a compiler as a GCC front end, GCC front ends have also been created for languages very different from those for which GCC was designed, such as the declarative logic/functional language Mercury. For these reasons, it may also be useful to implement compilers created for specialized purposes (for example, as part of a research project) as GCC front ends.


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5. Source Tree Structure and Build System

This chapter describes the structure of the GCC source tree, and how GCC is built. The user documentation for building and installing GCC is in a separate manual (http://gcc.gnu.org/install/), with which it is presumed that you are familiar.

5.1 Configure Terms and History  Configuration terminology and history.
5.2 Top Level Source Directory  The top level source directory.
5.3 The `gcc' Subdirectory  The `gcc' subdirectory.
5.4 Test Suites  The GCC test suites.


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5.1 Configure Terms and History

The configure and build process has a long and colorful history, and can be confusing to anyone who doesn't know why things are the way they are. While there are other documents which describe the configuration process in detail, here are a few things that everyone working on GCC should know.

There are three system names that the build knows about: the machine you are building on (build), the machine that you are building for (host), and the machine that GCC will produce code for (target). When you configure GCC, you specify these with `--build=', `--host=', and `--target='.

Specifying the host without specifying the build should be avoided, as configure may (and once did) assume that the host you specify is also the build, which may not be true.

If build, host, and target are all the same, this is called a native. If build and host are the same but target is different, this is called a cross. If build, host, and target are all different this is called a canadian (for obscure reasons dealing with Canada's political party and the background of the person working on the build at that time). If host and target are the same, but build is different, you are using a cross-compiler to build a native for a different system. Some people call this a host-x-host, crossed native, or cross-built native. If build and target are the same, but host is different, you are using a cross compiler to build a cross compiler that produces code for the machine you're building on. This is rare, so there is no common way of describing it (although I propose calling it a crossback).

If build and host are the same, the GCC you are building will also be used to build the target libraries (like libstdc++). If build and host are different, you must have already build and installed a cross compiler that will be used to build the target libraries (if you configured with `--target=foo-bar', this compiler will be called foo-bar-gcc).

In the case of target libraries, the machine you're building for is the machine you specified with `--target'. So, build is the machine you're building on (no change there), host is the machine you're building for (the target libraries are built for the target, so host is the target you specified), and target doesn't apply (because you're not building a compiler, you're building libraries). The configure/make process will adjust these variables as needed. It also sets $with_cross_host to the original `--host' value in case you need it.

The libiberty support library is built up to three times: once for the host, once for the target (even if they are the same), and once for the build if build and host are different. This allows it to be used by all programs which are generated in the course of the build process.


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5.2 Top Level Source Directory

The top level source directory in a GCC distribution contains several files and directories that are shared with other software distributions such as that of GNU Binutils. It also contains several subdirectories that contain parts of GCC and its runtime libraries:

`boehm-gc'
The Boehm conservative garbage collector, used as part of the Java runtime library.

`contrib'
Contributed scripts that may be found useful in conjunction with GCC. One of these, `contrib/texi2pod.pl', is used to generate man pages from Texinfo manuals as part of the GCC build process.

`fastjar'
An implementation of the jar command, used with the Java front end.

`gcc'
The main sources of GCC itself (except for runtime libraries), including optimizers, support for different target architectures, language front ends, and test suites. See section The `gcc' Subdirectory, for details.

`include'
Headers for the libiberty library.

`libf2c'
The Fortran runtime library.

`libffi'
The libffi library, used as part of the Java runtime library.

`libiberty'
The libiberty library, used for portability and for some generally useful data structures and algorithms. See section `Introduction' in GNU libiberty, for more information about this library.

`libjava'
The Java runtime library.

`libobjc'
The Objective-C runtime library.

`libstdc++-v3'
The C++ runtime library.

`maintainer-scripts'
Scripts used by the gccadmin account on gcc.gnu.org.

`zlib'
The zlib compression library, used by the Java front end and as part of the Java runtime library.

The build system in the top level directory, including how recursion into subdirectories works and how building runtime libraries for multilibs is handled, is documented in a separate manual, included with GNU Binutils. See section `GNU configure and build system' in The GNU configure and build system, for details.


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5.3 The `gcc' Subdirectory

The `gcc' directory contains many files that are part of the C sources of GCC, other files used as part of the configuration and build process, and subdirectories including documentation and a test suite. The files that are sources of GCC are documented in a separate chapter. See section Passes and Files of the Compiler.

5.3.1 Subdirectories of `gcc'  
5.3.2 Configuration in the `gcc' Directory  The configuration process, and the files it uses.
5.3.3 Build System in the `gcc' Directory  The build system in the `gcc' directory.
5.3.4 Makefile Targets  Targets in `gcc/Makefile'.
5.3.5 Library Source Files and Headers under the `gcc' Directory  Library source files and headers under `gcc/'.
5.3.6 Headers Installed by GCC  Headers installed by GCC.
5.3.7 Building Documentation  Building documentation in GCC.
5.3.8 Anatomy of a Language Front End  Anatomy of a language front end.
5.3.9 Anatomy of a Target Back End  Anatomy of a target back end.


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5.3.1 Subdirectories of `gcc'

The `gcc' directory contains the following subdirectories:

`language'
Subdirectories for various languages. Directories containing a file `config-lang.in' are language subdirectories. The contents of the subdirectories `cp' (for C++) and `objc' (for Objective-C) are documented in this manual (see section Passes and Files of the Compiler); those for other languages are not. See section Anatomy of a Language Front End, for details of the files in these directories.

`config'
Configuration files for supported architectures and operating systems. See section Anatomy of a Target Back End, for details of the files in thie directory.

`doc'
Texinfo documentation for GCC, together with automatically generated man pages and support for converting the installation manual to HTML. See section 5.3.7 Building Documentation.

`fixinc'
The support for fixing system headers to work with GCC. See `fixinc/README' for more information. The headers fixed by this mechanism are installed in `libsubdir/include'. Along with those headers, `README-fixinc' is also installed, as `libsubdir/include/README'.

`ginclude'
System headers installed by GCC, mainly those required by the C standard of freestanding implementations. See section Headers Installed by GCC, for details of when these and other headers are installed.

`intl'
GNU libintl, from GNU gettext, for systems which do not include it in libc. Properly, this directory should be at top level, parallel to the `gcc' directory.

`po'
Message catalogs with translations of messages produced by GCC into various languages, `language.po'. This directory also contains `gcc.pot', the template for these message catalogues, `exgettext', a wrapper around gettext to extract the messages from the GCC sources and create `gcc.pot', which is run by make gcc.pot, and `EXCLUDES', a list of files from which messages should not be extracted.

`testsuite'
The GCC test suites (except for those for runtime libraries). See section 5.4 Test Suites.


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5.3.2 Configuration in the `gcc' Directory

The `gcc' directory is configured with an Autoconf-generated script `configure'. The `configure' script is generated from `configure.in' and `aclocal.m4'. From the files `configure.in' and `acconfig.h', Autoheader generates the file `config.in'. The file `cstamp-h.in' is used as a timestamp.

5.3.2.1 Scripts Used by `configure'  Scripts used by `configure'.
5.3.2.2 The `config.gcc' File  The `config.gcc' file.
5.3.2.3 Files Created by configure  Files created by running `configure'.


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5.3.2.1 Scripts Used by `configure'

`configure' uses some other scripts to help in its work:


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5.3.2.2 The `config.gcc' File

FIXME: document the contents of this file, and what variables should be set to control build, host and target configuration.


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5.3.2.3 Files Created by configure

Here we spell out what files will be set up by `configure' in the `gcc' directory. Some other files are created as temporary files in the configuration process, and are not used in the subsequent build; these are not documented.

The following configuration headers are created from the Makefile, using `mkconfig.sh', rather than directly by `configure'. `config.h', `hconfig.h' and `tconfig.h' all contain the `xm-machine.h' header, if any, appropriate to the host, build and target machines respectively, the configuration headers for the target, and some definitions; for the host and build machines, these include the autoconfigured headers generated by `configure'. The other configuration headers are determined by `config.gcc'. They also contain the typedefs for rtx, rtvec and tree.


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5.3.3 Build System in the `gcc' Directory

FIXME: describe the build system, including what is built in what stages. Also list the various source files that are used in the build process but aren't source files of GCC itself and so aren't documented below (see section 6. Passes and Files of the Compiler).


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5.3.4 Makefile Targets

all
This is the default target. Depending on what your build/host/target configuration is, it coordinates all the things that need to be built.

doc
Produce info-formatted documentation. Also, make dvi is available for DVI-formatted documentation, and make generated-manpages to generate man pages.

mostlyclean
Delete the files made while building the compiler.

clean
That, and all the other files built by make all.

distclean
That, and all the files created by configure.

extraclean
That, and any temporary or intermediate files, like emacs backup files.

maintainer-clean
Distclean plus any file that can be generated from other files. Note that additional tools may be required beyond what is normally needed to build gcc.

install
Installs gcc.

uninstall
Deletes installed files.

check
Run the testsuite. This creates a `testsuite' subdirectory that has various `.sum' and `.log' files containing the results of the testing. You can run subsets with, for example, make check-gcc. You can specify specific tests by setting RUNTESTFLAGS to be the name of the `.exp' file, optionally followed by (for some tests) an equals and a file wildcard, like:

 
make check-gcc RUNTESTFLAGS="execute.exp=19980413-*"

Note that running the testsuite may require additional tools be installed, such as TCL or dejagnu.

bootstrap
Builds gcc three times--once with the native compiler, once with the native-built compiler it just built, and once with the compiler it built the second time. In theory, the last two should produce the same results, which make compare can check. Each step of this process is called a "stage", and the results of each stage N (N = 1...3) are copied to a subdirectory `stageN/'.

bootstrap-lean
Like bootstrap, except that the various stages are removed once they're no longer needed. This saves disk space.

bubblestrap
Once bootstrapped, this incrementally rebuilds each of the three stages, one at a time. It does this by "bubbling" the stages up from their subdirectories, rebuilding them, and copying them back to their subdirectories. This will allow you to, for example, quickly rebuild a bootstrapped compiler after changing the sources, without having to do a full bootstrap.

quickstrap
Rebuilds the most recently built stage. Since each stage requires special invocation, using this target means you don't have to keep track of which stage you're on or what invocation that stage needs.

cleanstrap
Removed everything (make clean) and rebuilds (make bootstrap).

stageN (N = 1...4)
For each stage, moves the appropriate files to the `stageN' subdirectory.

unstageN (N = 1...4)
Undoes the corresponding stageN.

restageN (N = 1...4)
Undoes the corresponding stageN and rebuilds it with the appropriate flags.

compare
Compares the results of stages 2 and 3. This ensures that the compiler is running properly, since it should produce the same object files regardless of how it itself was compiled.


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5.3.5 Library Source Files and Headers under the `gcc' Directory

FIXME: list here, with explanation, all the C source files and headers under the `gcc' directory that aren't built into the GCC executable but rather are part of runtime libraries and object files, such as `crtstuff.c' and `unwind-dw2.c'. See section Headers Installed by GCC, for more information about the `ginclude' directory.


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5.3.6 Headers Installed by GCC

In general, GCC expects the system C library to provide most of the headers to be used with it. However, GCC will fix those headers if necessary to make them work with GCC, and will install some headers required of freestanding implementations. These headers are installed in `libsubdir/include'. Headers for non-C runtime libraries are also installed by GCC; these are not documented here. (FIXME: document them somewhere.)

Several of the headers GCC installs are in the `ginclude' directory. These headers, `iso646.h', `stdarg.h', `stdbool.h', `stddef.h' and `varargs.h', are installed in `libsubdir/include', unless the target Makefile fragment (see section 12.1 Target Makefile Fragments) overrides this by setting USER_H.

In addition to these headers and those generated by fixing system headers to work with GCC, some other headers may also be installed in `libsubdir/include'. `config.gcc' may set extra_headers; this specifies additional headers under `config' to be installed on some systems. GCC normally installs a <float.h> file; these are kept as `config/float-format.h', where format is specified by a float_format setting in `config.gcc', and a setting `float_format=none' disables installation of this header. GCC also installs its own version of <limits.h>; this is generated from `glimits.h', together with `limitx.h' and `limity.h' if the system also has its own version of <limits.h>. (GCC provides its own header because it is required of ISO C freestanding implementations, but needs to include the system header from its own header as well because other standards such as POSIX specify additional values to be defined in <limits.h>.) The system's <limits.h> header is used via `libsubdir/include/syslimits.h', which is copied from `gsyslimits.h' if it does not need fixing to work with GCC; if it needs fixing, `syslimits.h' is the fixed copy.


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5.3.7 Building Documentation

The main GCC documentation is in the form of manuals in Texinfo format. These are installed in Info format, and DVI versions may be generated by make dvi. In addition, some man pages are generated from the Texinfo manuals, there are some other text files with miscellaneous documentation, and runtime libraries have their own documentation outside the `gcc' directory. FIXME: document the documentation for runtime libraries somewhere.

5.3.7.1 Texinfo Manuals  GCC manuals in Texinfo format.
5.3.7.2 Man Page Generation  Generating man pages from Texinfo manuals.
5.3.7.3 Miscellaneous Documentation  Miscellaneous text files with documentation.


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5.3.7.1 Texinfo Manuals

The manuals for GCC as a whole, and the C and C++ front ends, are in files `doc/*.texi'. Other front ends have their own manuals in files `language/*.texi'. Common files `doc/include/*.texi' are provided which may be included in multiple manuals; the following files are in `doc/include':

`fdl.texi'
The GNU Free Documentation License.
`funding.texi'
The section "Funding Free Software".
`gcc-common.texi'
Common definitions for manuals.
`gpl.texi'
The GNU General Public License.
`texinfo.tex'
A copy of `texinfo.tex' known to work with the GCC manuals.

DVI formatted manuals are generated by make dvi, which uses texi2dvi (via the Makefile macro $(TEXI2DVI)). Info manuals are generated by make info (which is run as part of a bootstrap); this generates the manuals in the source directory, using makeinfo via the Makefile macro $(MAKEINFO), and they are included in release distributions.

Manuals are also provided on the GCC web site, in both HTML and PostScript forms. This is done via the script `maintainer-scripts/update_web_docs'. Each manual to be provided online must be listed in the definition of MANUALS in that file; a file `name.texi' must only appear once in the source tree, and the output manual must have the same name as the source file. (However, other Texinfo files, included in manuals but not themselves the root files of manuals, may have names that appear more than once in the source tree.) The manual file `name.texi' should only include other files in its own directory or in `doc/include'. HTML manuals will be generated by makeinfo --html and PostScript manuals by texi2dvi and dvips. All Texinfo files that are parts of manuals must be checked into CVS, even if they are generated files, for the generation of online manuals to work.

The installation manual, `doc/install.texi', is also provided on the GCC web site. The HTML version is generated by the script `doc/install.texi2html'.


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5.3.7.2 Man Page Generation

Because of user demand, in addition to full Texinfo manuals, man pages are provided which contain extracts from those manuals. These man pages are generated from the Texinfo manuals using `contrib/texi2pod.pl' and pod2man. (The man page for g++, `cp/g++.1', just contains a `.so' reference to `gcc.1', but all the other man pages are generated from Texinfo manuals.)

Because many systems may not have the necessary tools installed to generate the man pages, they are only generated if the `configure' script detects that recent enough tools are installed, and the Makefiles allow generating man pages to fail without aborting the build. Man pages are also included in release distributions. They are generated in the source directory.

Magic comments in Texinfo files starting `@c man' control what parts of a Texinfo file go into a man page. Only a subset of Texinfo is supported by `texi2pod.pl', and it may be necessary to add support for more Texinfo features to this script when generating new man pages. To improve the man page output, some special Texinfo macros are provided in `doc/include/gcc-common.texi' which `texi2pod.pl' understands:

@gcctabopt
Use in the form `@table @gcctabopt' for tables of options, where for printed output the effect of `@code' is better than that of `@option' but for man page output a different effect is wanted.
@gccoptlist
Use for summary lists of options in manuals.
@gol
Use at the end of each line inside `@gccoptlist'. This is necessary to avoid problems with differences in how the `@gccoptlist' macro is handled by different Texinfo formatters.

FIXME: describe the `texi2pod.pl' input language and magic comments in more detail.


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5.3.7.3 Miscellaneous Documentation

In addition to the formal documentation that is installed by GCC, there are several other text files with miscellaneous documentation:

`ABOUT-GCC-NLS'
Notes on GCC's Native Language Support. FIXME: this should be part of this manual rather than a separate file.
`ABOUT-NLS'
Notes on the Free Translation Project.
`COPYING'
The GNU General Public License.
`COPYING.LIB'
The GNU Lesser General Public License.
`*ChangeLog*'
`*/ChangeLog*'
Change log files for various parts of GCC.
`LANGUAGES'
Details of a few changes to the GCC front-end interface. FIXME: the information in this file should be part of general documentation of the front-end interface in this manual.
`ONEWS'
Information about new features in old versions of GCC. (For recent versions, the information is on the GCC web site.)
`README.Portability'
Information about portability issues when writing code in GCC. FIXME: why isn't this part of this manual or of the GCC Coding Conventions?
`SERVICE'
A pointer to the GNU Service Directory.

FIXME: document such files in subdirectories, at least `config', `cp', `objc', `testsuite'.


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5.3.8 Anatomy of a Language Front End

A front end for a language in GCC has the following parts:

If the front end is added to the official GCC CVS repository, the following are also necessary:

5.3.8.1 The Front End `language' Directory  The front end `language' directory.
5.3.8.2 The Front End `config-lang.in' File  The front end `config-lang.in' file.


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5.3.8.1 The Front End `language' Directory

A front end `language' directory contains the source files of that front end (but not of any runtime libraries, which should be outside the `gcc' directory). This includes documentation, and possibly some subsidiary programs build alongside the front end. Certain files are special and other parts of the compiler depend on their names:

`config-lang.in'
This file is required in all language subdirectories. See section The Front End `config-lang.in' File, for details of its contents
`Make-lang.in'
This file is required in all language subdirectories. It contains targets lang.hook (where lang is the setting of language in `config-lang.in') for the following values of hook, and any other Makefile rules required to build those targets (which may if necessary use other Makefiles specified in outputs in `config-lang.in', although this is deprecated).

all.build
all.cross
start.encap
rest.encap
FIXME: exactly what goes in each of these targets?
info
Build info documentation for the front end, in the source directory. This target is only called by make bootstrap if a suitable version of makeinfo is available, so does not need to check for this, and should fail if an error occurs.
dvi
Build DVI documentation for the front end, in the build directory. This should be done using $(TEXI2DVI), with appropriate `-I' arguments pointing to directories of included files.
generated-manpages
Build generated man pages for the front end from Texinfo manuals (see section 5.3.7.2 Man Page Generation), in the source directory. This target is only called if the necessary tools are available, but should ignore errors so as not to stop the build if errors occur; man pages are optional and the tools involved may be installed in a broken way.
install-normal
FIXME: what is this target for?
install-common
Install everything that is part of the front end, apart from the compiler executables listed in compilers in `config-lang.in' that are installed in `libsubdir' by the main `Makefile'.
install-info
Install info documentation for the front end, if it is present in the source directory. (It may not be present if a suitable version of makeinfo was not installed.) This target should run the command install-info to update the info directory, but should ignore errors when running that command.
install-man
Install man pages for the front end. This target should ignore errors.
uninstall
Uninstall files installed by installing the compiler. This is currently documented not to be supported, so the hook need not do anything.
mostlyclean
clean
distclean
extraclean
maintainer-clean
Except for extraclean, the language parts of the standard GNU `*clean' targets. See section `Standard Targets for Users' in GNU Coding Standards, for details of the standard targets. extraclean does distclean and also deletes anything likely to be found in the source directory that shouldn't be in the distribution. For GCC, maintainer-clean should delete all generated files in the source directory that are not checked into CVS, but should not delete anything checked into CVS.
stage1
stage2
stage3
stage4
Move to the stage directory files not included in stagestuff in `config-lang.in' or otherwise moved by the main `Makefile'.

`lang-options.h'
This file provides entries for documented_lang_options in `toplev.c' describing command-line options the front end accepts for `--help' output.
`lang-specs.h'
This file provides entries for default_compilers in `gcc.c' which override the default of giving an error that a compiler for that language is not installed.
`language-tree.def'
This file, which need not exist, defines any language-specific tree codes.


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5.3.8.2 The Front End `config-lang.in' File

Each language subdirectory contains a `config-lang.in' file. This file is a shell script that may define some variables describing the language:

language
This definition must be present, and gives the name of the language for some purposes such as arguments to `--enable-languages'.
lang_requires
If defined, this variable lists (space-separated) language front ends other than C that this front end requires to be enabled (with the names given being their language settings). For example, the Java front end depends on the C++ front end, so sets `lang_requires=c++'.
target_libs
If defined, this variable lists (space-separated) targets in the top level `Makefile' to build the runtime libraries for this language, such as target-libobjc.
lang_dirs
If defined, this variable lists (space-separated) top level directories (parallel to `gcc'), apart from the runtime libraries, that should not be configured if this front end is not built.
build_by_default
If defined to `no', this language front end is not built unless enabled in a `--enable-languages' argument. Otherwise, front ends are built by default, subject to any special logic in `configure.in' (as is present to disable the Ada front end if the Ada compiler is not already installed).
boot_language
If defined to `yes', this front end is built in stage 1 of the bootstrap. This is only relevant to front ends written in their own languages.
compilers
If defined, a space-separated list of compiler executables that should be installed in `libsubdir'. The names here will each end with `\$(exeext)'.
stagestuff
If defined, a space-separated list of files that should be moved to the `stagen' directories in each stage of bootstrap.
outputs
If defined, a space-separated list of files that should be generated by `configure' substituting values in them. This mechanism can be used to create a file `language/Makefile' from `language/Makefile.in', but this is deprecated, building everything from the single `gcc/Makefile' is preferred.


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5.3.9 Anatomy of a Target Back End

A back end for a target architecture in GCC has the following parts:

If the back end is added to the official GCC CVS repository, the following are also necessary:


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5.4 Test Suites

GCC contains several test suites to help maintain compiler quality. Most of the runtime libraries and language front ends in GCC have test suites. Currently only the C language test suites are documented here; FIXME: document the others.

5.4.1 Idioms Used in Test Suite Code  Idioms used in test suite code.
5.4.2 C Language Test Suites  The C language test suites.
5.4.3 The Java library test suites.  


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5.4.1 Idioms Used in Test Suite Code

In the `gcc.c-torture' test suites, test cases are commonly named after the date on which they were added. This allows people to tell at a glance whether a test failure is because of a recently found bug that has not yet been fixed, or whether it may be a regression. In other test suites, more descriptive names are used. In general C test cases have a trailing `-n.c', starting with `-1.c', in case other test cases with similar names are added later.

Test cases should use abort () to indicate failure and exit (0) for success; on some targets these may be redefined to indicate failure and success in other ways.

In the `gcc.dg' test suite, it is often necessary to test that an error is indeed a hard error and not just a warning--for example, where it is a constraint violation in the C standard, which must become an error with `-pedantic-errors'. The following idiom, where the first line shown is line line of the file and the line that generates the error, is used for this:

 
/* { dg-bogus "warning" "warning in place of error" } */
/* { dg-error "regexp" "message" { target *-*-* } line } */

It may be necessary to check that an expression is an integer constant expression and has a certain value. To check that E has value V, an idiom similar to the following is used:

 
char x[((E) == (V) ? 1 : -1)];

In `gcc.dg' tests, __typeof__ is sometimes used to make assertions about the types of expressions. See, for example, `gcc.dg/c99-condexpr-1.c'. The more subtle uses depend on the exact rules for the types of conditional expressions in the C standard; see, for example, `gcc.dg/c99-intconst-1.c'.

It is useful to be able to test that optimizations are being made properly. This cannot be done in all cases, but it can be done where the optimization will lead to code being optimized away (for example, where flow analysis or alias analysis should show that certain code cannot be called) or to functions not being called because they have been expanded as built-in functions. Such tests go in `gcc.c-torture/execute'. Where code should be optimized away, a call to a nonexistent function such as link_failure () may be inserted; a definition

 
#ifndef __OPTIMIZE__
void
link_failure (void)
{
  abort ();
}
#endif

will also be needed so that linking still succeeds when the test is run without optimization. When all calls to a built-in function should have been optimized and no calls to the non-built-in version of the function should remain, that function may be defined as static to call abort () (although redeclaring a function as static may not work on all targets).

FIXME: discuss non-C test suites here.


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5.4.2 C Language Test Suites

GCC contains the following C language test suites, in the `gcc/testsuite' directory:

`gcc.c-torture/compat'
FIXME: describe this.

This directory should probably not be used for new tests.

`gcc.c-torture/compile'
This test suite contains test cases that should compile, but do not need to link or run. These test cases are compiled with several different combinations of optimization options. All warnings are disabled for these test cases, so this directory is not suitable if you wish to test for the presence or absence of compiler warnings. While special options can be set, and tests disabled on specific platforms, by the use of `.x' files, mostly these test cases should not contain platform dependencies. FIXME: discuss how defines such as NO_LABEL_VALUES and STACK_SIZE are used.
`gcc.c-torture/execute'
This test suite contains test cases that should compile, link and run; otherwise the same comments as for `gcc.c-torture/compile' apply.
`gcc.c-torture/unsorted'
FIXME: describe this.

This directory should probably not be used for new tests.

`gcc.dg'
This test suite contains tests using the more modern `dg' harness. Magic comments determine whether the file is preprocessed, compiled, linked or run. In these tests, error and warning message texts are compared against expected texts or regular expressions given in comments. These tests are run with the options `-ansi -pedantic' unless other options are given in the test. Except as noted below they are not run with multiple optimization options.
`gcc.dg/cpp'
This subdirectory contains tests of the preprocessor.
`gcc.dg/debug'
This subdirectory contains tests for debug formats. Tests in this subdirectory are run for each debug format that the compiler supports.
`gcc.dg/format'
This subdirectory contains tests of the `-Wformat' format checking. Tests in this directory are run with and without `-DWIDE'.
`gcc.dg/noncompile'
This subdirectory contains tests of code that should not compile and does not need any special compilation options. They are run with multiple optimization options, since sometimes invalid code crashes the compiler with optimization.
`gcc.dg/special'
FIXME: describe this.
`gcc.c-torture/misc-tests'
FIXME: describe this, when it should be used for new tests and when it shouldn't.

FIXME: merge in `testsuite/README.gcc' and discuss the format of test cases and magic comments more.


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5.4.3 The Java library test suites.

Runtime tests are executed via `make check' from the `testsuite' directory of the libjava hierarchy in the build tree. Additional runtime tests can be checked into this testsuite.

Regression testing of the core packages in libgcj is also covered by the Mauve test suite. The Mauve Project develops tests for the Java Class Libraries. These tests are run as part of libgcj testing by specifying the location of the Mauve tree when invoking `make', as in `make MAUVEDIR=~/mauve check'.

The Jacks project provides a test suite for Java compilers that can be used to test changes that affect the GCJ front end. There is no automated mechanism to run the Jacks suite as part of GCJ testing.

We encourage developers to contribute test cases to Mauve and Jacks.


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6. Passes and Files of the Compiler

The overall control structure of the compiler is in `toplev.c'. This file is responsible for initialization, decoding arguments, opening and closing files, and sequencing the passes.

The parsing pass is invoked only once, to parse the entire input. A high level tree representation is then generated from the input, one function at a time. This tree code is then transformed into RTL intermediate code, and processed. The files involved in transforming the trees into RTL are `expr.c', `expmed.c', and `stmt.c'. The order of trees that are processed, is not necessarily the same order they are generated from the input, due to deferred inlining, and other considerations.

Each time the parsing pass reads a complete function definition or top-level declaration, it calls either the function rest_of_compilation, or the function rest_of_decl_compilation in `toplev.c', which are responsible for all further processing necessary, ending with output of the assembler language. All other compiler passes run, in sequence, within rest_of_compilation. When that function returns from compiling a function definition, the storage used for that function definition's compilation is entirely freed, unless it is an inline function, or was deferred for some reason (this can occur in templates, for example). (see section `An Inline Function is As Fast As a Macro' in Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)).

Here is a list of all the passes of the compiler and their source files. Also included is a description of where debugging dumps can be requested with `-d' options.

Some additional files are used by all or many passes:


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7. Trees: The intermediate representation used by the C and C++ front ends

This chapter documents the internal representation used by GCC to represent C and C++ source programs. When presented with a C or C++ source program, GCC parses the program, performs semantic analysis (including the generation of error messages), and then produces the internal representation described here. This representation contains a complete representation for the entire translation unit provided as input to the front end. This representation is then typically processed by a code-generator in order to produce machine code, but could also be used in the creation of source browsers, intelligent editors, automatic documentation generators, interpreters, and any other programs needing the ability to process C or C++ code.

This chapter explains the internal representation. In particular, it documents the internal representation for C and C++ source constructs, and the macros, functions, and variables that can be used to access these constructs. The C++ representation is largely a superset of the representation used in the C front end. There is only one construct used in C that does not appear in the C++ front end and that is the GNU "nested function" extension. Many of the macros documented here do not apply in C because the corresponding language constructs do not appear in C.

If you are developing a "back end", be it is a code-generator or some other tool, that uses this representation, you may occasionally find that you need to ask questions not easily answered by the functions and macros available here. If that situation occurs, it is quite likely that GCC already supports the functionality you desire, but that the interface is simply not documented here. In that case, you should ask the GCC maintainers (via mail to gcc@gcc.gnu.org) about documenting the functionality you require. Similarly, if you find yourself writing functions that do not deal directly with your back end, but instead might be useful to other people using the GCC front end, you should submit your patches for inclusion in GCC.

7.1 Deficiencies  Topics net yet covered in this document.
7.2 Overview  All about trees.
7.3 Types  Fundamental and aggregate types.
7.4 Scopes  Namespaces and classes.
7.6 Functions  Overloading, function bodies, and linkage.
7.5 Declarations  Type declarations and variables.
7.7 Attributes in trees  Declaration and type attributes.
7.8 Expressions  From typeid to throw.


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7.1 Deficiencies

There are many places in which this document is incomplet and incorrekt. It is, as of yet, only preliminary documentation.


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7.2 Overview

The central data structure used by the internal representation is the tree. These nodes, while all of the C type tree, are of many varieties. A tree is a pointer type, but the object to which it points may be of a variety of types. From this point forward, we will refer to trees in ordinary type, rather than in this font, except when talking about the actual C type tree.

You can tell what kind of node a particular tree is by using the TREE_CODE macro. Many, many macros take a trees as input and return trees as output. However, most macros require a certain kinds of tree node as input. In other words, there is a type-system for trees, but it is not reflected in the C type-system.

For safety, it is useful to configure GCC with `--enable-checking'. Although this results in a significant performance penalty (since all tree types are checked at run-time), and is therefore inappropriate in a release version, it is extremely helpful during the development process.

Many macros behave as predicates. Many, although not all, of these predicates end in `_P'. Do not rely on the result type of these macros being of any particular type. You may, however, rely on the fact that the type can be compared to 0, so that statements like
 
if (TEST_P (t) && !TEST_P (y))
  x = 1;
and
 
int i = (TEST_P (t) != 0);
are legal. Macros that return int values now may be changed to return tree values, or other pointers in the future. Even those that continue to return int may return multiple nonzero codes where previously they returned only zero and one. Therefore, you should not write code like
 
if (TEST_P (t) == 1)
as this code is not guaranteed to work correctly in the future.

You should not take the address of values returned by the macros or functions described here. In particular, no guarantee is given that the values are lvalues.

In general, the names of macros are all in uppercase, while the names of functions are entirely in lower case. There are rare exceptions to this rule. You should assume that any macro or function whose name is made up entirely of uppercase letters may evaluate its arguments more than once. You may assume that a macro or function whose name is made up entirely of lowercase letters will evaluate its arguments only once.

The error_mark_node is a special tree. Its tree code is ERROR_MARK, but since there is only ever one node with that code, the usual practice is to compare the tree against error_mark_node. (This test is just a test for pointer equality.) If an error has occurred during front-end processing the flag errorcount will be set. If the front end has encountered code it cannot handle, it will issue a message to the user and set sorrycount. When these flags are set, any macro or function which normally returns a tree of a particular kind may instead return the error_mark_node. Thus, if you intend to do any processing of erroneous code, you must be prepared to deal with the error_mark_node.

Occasionally, a particular tree slot (like an operand to an expression, or a particular field in a declaration) will be referred to as "reserved for the back end." These slots are used to store RTL when the tree is converted to RTL for use by the GCC back end. However, if that process is not taking place (e.g., if the front end is being hooked up to an intelligent editor), then those slots may be used by the back end presently in use.

If you encounter situations that do not match this documentation, such as tree nodes of types not mentioned here, or macros documented to return entities of a particular kind that instead return entities of some different kind, you have found a bug, either in the front end or in the documentation. Please report these bugs as you would any other bug.

7.2.1 Trees  Macros and functions that can be used with all trees.
7.2.2 Identifiers  The names of things.
7.2.3 Containers  Lists and vectors.


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7.2.1 Trees

This section is not here yet.


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7.2.2 Identifiers

An IDENTIFIER_NODE represents a slightly more general concept that the standard C or C++ concept of identifier. In particular, an IDENTIFIER_NODE may contain a `$', or other extraordinary characters.

There are never two distinct IDENTIFIER_NODEs representing the same identifier. Therefore, you may use pointer equality to compare IDENTIFIER_NODEs, rather than using a routine like strcmp.

You can use the following macros to access identifiers:

IDENTIFIER_POINTER
The string represented by the identifier, represented as a char*. This string is always NUL-terminated, and contains no embedded NUL characters.

IDENTIFIER_LENGTH
The length of the string returned by IDENTIFIER_POINTER, not including the trailing NUL. This value of IDENTIFIER_LENGTH (x) is always the same as strlen (IDENTIFIER_POINTER (x)).

IDENTIFIER_OPNAME_P
This predicate holds if the identifier represents the name of an overloaded operator. In this case, you should not depend on the contents of either the IDENTIFIER_POINTER or the IDENTIFIER_LENGTH.

IDENTIFIER_TYPENAME_P
This predicate holds if the identifier represents the name of a user-defined conversion operator. In this case, the TREE_TYPE of the IDENTIFIER_NODE holds the type to which the conversion operator converts.


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7.2.3 Containers

Two common container data structures can be represented directly with tree nodes. A TREE_LIST is a singly linked list containing two trees per node. These are the TREE_PURPOSE and TREE_VALUE of each node. (Often, the TREE_PURPOSE contains some kind of tag, or additional information, while the TREE_VALUE contains the majority of the payload. In other cases, the TREE_PURPOSE is simply NULL_TREE, while in still others both the TREE_PURPOSE and TREE_VALUE are of equal stature.) Given one TREE_LIST node, the next node is found by following the TREE_CHAIN. If the TREE_CHAIN is NULL_TREE, then you have reached the end of the list.

A TREE_VEC is a simple vector. The TREE_VEC_LENGTH is an integer (not a tree) giving the number of nodes in the vector. The nodes themselves are accessed using the TREE_VEC_ELT macro, which takes two arguments. The first is the TREE_VEC in question; the second is an integer indicating which element in the vector is desired. The elements are indexed from zero.


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7.3 Types

All types have corresponding tree nodes. However, you should not assume that there is exactly one tree node corresponding to each type. There are often several nodes each of which correspond to the same type.

For the most part, different kinds of types have different tree codes. (For example, pointer types use a POINTER_TYPE code while arrays use an ARRAY_TYPE code.) However, pointers to member functions use the RECORD_TYPE code. Therefore, when writing a switch statement that depends on the code associated with a particular type, you should take care to handle pointers to member functions under the RECORD_TYPE case label.

In C++, an array type is not qualified; rather the type of the array elements is qualified. This situation is reflected in the intermediate representation. The macros described here will always examine the qualification of the underlying element type when applied to an array type. (If the element type is itself an array, then the recursion continues until a non-array type is found, and the qualification of this type is examined.) So, for example, CP_TYPE_CONST_P will hold of the type const int ()[7], denoting an array of seven ints.

The following functions and macros deal with cv-qualification of types:

CP_TYPE_QUALS
This macro returns the set of type qualifiers applied to this type. This value is TYPE_UNQUALIFIED if no qualifiers have been applied. The TYPE_QUAL_CONST bit is set if the type is const-qualified. The TYPE_QUAL_VOLATILE bit is set if the type is volatile-qualified. The TYPE_QUAL_RESTRICT bit is set if the type is restrict-qualified.

CP_TYPE_CONST_P
This macro holds if the type is const-qualified.

CP_TYPE_VOLATILE_P
This macro holds if the type is volatile-qualified.

CP_TYPE_RESTRICT_P
This macro holds if the type is restrict-qualified.

CP_TYPE_CONST_NON_VOLATILE_P
This predicate holds for a type that is const-qualified, but not volatile-qualified; other cv-qualifiers are ignored as well: only the const-ness is tested.

TYPE_MAIN_VARIANT
This macro returns the unqualified version of a type. It may be applied to an unqualified type, but it is not always the identity function in that case.

A few other macros and functions are usable with all types:

TYPE_SIZE
The number of bits required to represent the type, represented as an INTEGER_CST. For an incomplete type, TYPE_SIZE will be NULL_TREE.

TYPE_ALIGN
The alignment of the type, in bits, represented as an int.

TYPE_NAME
This macro returns a declaration (in the form of a TYPE_DECL) for the type. (Note this macro does not return a IDENTIFIER_NODE, as you might expect, given its name!) You can look at the DECL_NAME of the TYPE_DECL to obtain the actual name of the type. The TYPE_NAME will be NULL_TREE for a type that is not a built-in type, the result of a typedef, or a named class type.

CP_INTEGRAL_TYPE
This predicate holds if the type is an integral type. Notice that in C++, enumerations are not integral types.

ARITHMETIC_TYPE_P
This predicate holds if the type is an integral type (in the C++ sense) or a floating point type.

CLASS_TYPE_P
This predicate holds for a class-type.

TYPE_BUILT_IN
This predicate holds for a built-in type.

TYPE_PTRMEM_P
This predicate holds if the type is a pointer to data member.

TYPE_PTR_P
This predicate holds if the type is a pointer type, and the pointee is not a data member.

TYPE_PTRFN_P
This predicate holds for a pointer to function type.

TYPE_PTROB_P
This predicate holds for a pointer to object type. Note however that it does not hold for the generic pointer to object type void *. You may use TYPE_PTROBV_P to test for a pointer to object type as well as void *.

same_type_p
This predicate takes two types as input, and holds if they are the same type. For example, if one type is a typedef for the other, or both are typedefs for the same type. This predicate also holds if the two trees given as input are simply copies of one another; i.e., there is no difference between them at the source level, but, for whatever reason, a duplicate has been made in the representation. You should never use == (pointer equality) to compare types; always use same_type_p instead.

Detailed below are the various kinds of types, and the macros that can be used to access them. Although other kinds of types are used elsewhere in G++, the types described here are the only ones that you will encounter while examining the intermediate representation.

VOID_TYPE
Used to represent the void type.

INTEGER_TYPE
Used to represent the various integral types, including char, short, int, long, and long long. This code is not used for enumeration types, nor for the bool type. Note that GCC's CHAR_TYPE node is not used to represent char. The TYPE_PRECISION is the number of bits used in the representation, represented as an unsigned int. (Note that in the general case this is not the same value as TYPE_SIZE; suppose that there were a 24-bit integer type, but that alignment requirements for the ABI required 32-bit alignment. Then, TYPE_SIZE would be an INTEGER_CST for 32, while TYPE_PRECISION would be 24.) The integer type is unsigned if TREE_UNSIGNED holds; otherwise, it is signed.

The TYPE_MIN_VALUE is an INTEGER_CST for the smallest integer that may be represented by this type. Similarly, the TYPE_MAX_VALUE is an INTEGER_CST for the largest integer that may be represented by this type.

REAL_TYPE
Used to represent the float, double, and long double types. The number of bits in the floating-point representation is given by TYPE_PRECISION, as in the INTEGER_TYPE case.

COMPLEX_TYPE
Used to represent GCC built-in __complex__ data types. The TREE_TYPE is the type of the real and imaginary parts.

ENUMERAL_TYPE
Used to represent an enumeration type. The TYPE_PRECISION gives (as an int), the number of bits used to represent the type. If there are no negative enumeration constants, TREE_UNSIGNED will hold. The minimum and maximum enumeration constants may be obtained with TYPE_MIN_VALUE and TYPE_MAX_VALUE, respectively; each of these macros returns an INTEGER_CST.

The actual enumeration constants themselves may be obtained by looking at the TYPE_VALUES. This macro will return a TREE_LIST, containing the constants. The TREE_PURPOSE of each node will be an IDENTIFIER_NODE giving the name of the constant; the TREE_VALUE will be an INTEGER_CST giving the value assigned to that constant. These constants will appear in the order in which they were declared. The TREE_TYPE of each of these constants will be the type of enumeration type itself.

BOOLEAN_TYPE
Used to represent the bool type.

POINTER_TYPE
Used to represent pointer types, and pointer to data member types. The TREE_TYPE gives the type to which this type points. If the type is a pointer to data member type, then TYPE_PTRMEM_P will hold. For a pointer to data member type of the form `T X::*', TYPE_PTRMEM_CLASS_TYPE will be the type X, while TYPE_PTRMEM_POINTED_TO_TYPE will be the type T.

REFERENCE_TYPE
Used to represent reference types. The TREE_TYPE gives the type to which this type refers.

FUNCTION_TYPE
Used to represent the type of non-member functions and of static member functions. The TREE_TYPE gives the return type of the function. The TYPE_ARG_TYPES are a TREE_LIST of the argument types. The TREE_VALUE of each node in this list is the type of the corresponding argument; the TREE_PURPOSE is an expression for the default argument value, if any. If the last node in the list is void_list_node (a TREE_LIST node whose TREE_VALUE is the void_type_node), then functions of this type do not take variable arguments. Otherwise, they do take a variable number of arguments.

Note that in C (but not in C++) a function declared like void f() is an unprototyped function taking a variable number of arguments; the TYPE_ARG_TYPES of such a function will be NULL.

METHOD_TYPE
Used to represent the type of a non-static member function. Like a FUNCTION_TYPE, the return type is given by the TREE_TYPE. The type of *this, i.e., the class of which functions of this type are a member, is given by the TYPE_METHOD_BASETYPE. The TYPE_ARG_TYPES is the parameter list, as for a FUNCTION_TYPE, and includes the this argument.

ARRAY_TYPE
Used to represent array types. The TREE_TYPE gives the type of the elements in the array. If the array-bound is present in the type, the TYPE_DOMAIN is an INTEGER_TYPE whose TYPE_MIN_VALUE and TYPE_MAX_VALUE will be the lower and upper bounds of the array, respectively. The TYPE_MIN_VALUE will always be an INTEGER_CST for zero, while the TYPE_MAX_VALUE will be one less than the number of elements in the array, i.e., the highest value which may be used to index an element in the array.

RECORD_TYPE
Used to represent struct and class types, as well as pointers to member functions and similar constructs in other languages. TYPE_FIELDS contains the items contained in this type, each of which can be a FIELD_DECL, VAR_DECL, CONST_DECL, or TYPE_DECL. You may not make any assumptions about the ordering of the fields in the type or whether one or more of them overlap. If TYPE_PTRMEMFUNC_P holds, then this type is a pointer-to-member type. In that case, the TYPE_PTRMEMFUNC_FN_TYPE is a POINTER_TYPE pointing to a METHOD_TYPE. The METHOD_TYPE is the type of a function pointed to by the pointer-to-member function. If TYPE_PTRMEMFUNC_P does not hold, this type is a class type. For more information, see see section 7.4.2 Classes.

UNION_TYPE
Used to represent union types. Similar to RECORD_TYPE except that all FIELD_DECL nodes in TYPE_FIELD start at bit position zero.

QUAL_UNION_TYPE
Used to represent part of a variant record in Ada. Similar to UNION_TYPE except that each FIELD_DECL has a DECL_QUALIFIER field, which contains a boolean expression that indicates whether the field is present in the object. The type will only have one field, so each field's DECL_QUALIFIER is only evaluated if none of the expressions in the previous fields in TYPE_FIELDS are nonzero. Normally these expressions will reference a field in the outer object using a PLACEHOLDER_EXPR.

UNKNOWN_TYPE
This node is used to represent a type the knowledge of which is insufficient for a sound processing.

OFFSET_TYPE
This node is used to represent a data member; for example a pointer-to-data-member is represented by a POINTER_TYPE whose TREE_TYPE is an OFFSET_TYPE. For a data member X::m the TYPE_OFFSET_BASETYPE is X and the TREE_TYPE is the type of m.

TYPENAME_TYPE
Used to represent a construct of the form typename T::A. The TYPE_CONTEXT is T; the TYPE_NAME is an IDENTIFIER_NODE for A. If the type is specified via a template-id, then TYPENAME_TYPE_FULLNAME yields a TEMPLATE_ID_EXPR. The TREE_TYPE is non-NULL if the node is implicitly generated in support for the implicit typename extension; in which case the TREE_TYPE is a type node for the base-class.

TYPEOF_TYPE
Used to represent the __typeof__ extension. The TYPE_FIELDS is the expression the type of which is being represented.

There are variables whose values represent some of the basic types. These include:

void_type_node
A node for void.

integer_type_node
A node for int.

unsigned_type_node.
A node for unsigned int.

char_type_node.
A node for char.
It may sometimes be useful to compare one of these variables with a type in hand, using same_type_p.


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7.4 Scopes

The root of the entire intermediate representation is the variable global_namespace. This is the namespace specified with :: in C++ source code. All other namespaces, types, variables, functions, and so forth can be found starting with this namespace.

Besides namespaces, the other high-level scoping construct in C++ is the class. (Throughout this manual the term class is used to mean the types referred to in the ANSI/ISO C++ Standard as classes; these include types defined with the class, struct, and union keywords.)

7.4.1 Namespaces  Member functions, types, etc.
7.4.2 Classes  Members, bases, friends, etc.


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7.4.1 Namespaces

A namespace is represented by a NAMESPACE_DECL node.

However, except for the fact that it is distinguished as the root of the representation, the global namespace is no different from any other namespace. Thus, in what follows, we describe namespaces generally, rather than the global namespace in particular.

The following macros and functions can be used on a NAMESPACE_DECL:

DECL_NAME
This macro is used to obtain the IDENTIFIER_NODE corresponding to the unqualified name of the name of the namespace (see section 7.2.2 Identifiers). The name of the global namespace is `::', even though in C++ the global namespace is unnamed. However, you should use comparison with global_namespace, rather than DECL_NAME to determine whether or not a namespaces is the global one. An unnamed namespace will have a DECL_NAME equal to anonymous_namespace_name. Within a single translation unit, all unnamed namespaces will have the same name.

DECL_CONTEXT
This macro returns the enclosing namespace. The DECL_CONTEXT for the global_namespace is NULL_TREE.

DECL_NAMESPACE_ALIAS
If this declaration is for a namespace alias, then DECL_NAMESPACE_ALIAS is the namespace for which this one is an alias.

Do not attempt to use cp_namespace_decls for a namespace which is an alias. Instead, follow DECL_NAMESPACE_ALIAS links until you reach an ordinary, non-alias, namespace, and call cp_namespace_decls there.

DECL_NAMESPACE_STD_P
This predicate holds if the namespace is the special ::std namespace.

cp_namespace_decls
This function will return the declarations contained in the namespace, including types, overloaded functions, other namespaces, and so forth. If there are no declarations, this function will return NULL_TREE. The declarations are connected through their TREE_CHAIN fields.

Although most entries on this list will be declarations, TREE_LIST nodes may also appear. In this case, the TREE_VALUE will be an OVERLOAD. The value of the TREE_PURPOSE is unspecified; back ends should ignore this value. As with the other kinds of declarations returned by cp_namespace_decls, the TREE_CHAIN will point to the next declaration in this list.

For more information on the kinds of declarations that can occur on this list, See section 7.5 Declarations. Some declarations will not appear on this list. In particular, no FIELD_DECL, LABEL_DECL, or PARM_DECL nodes will appear here.

This function cannot be used with namespaces that have DECL_NAMESPACE_ALIAS set.


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7.4.2 Classes

A class type is represented by either a RECORD_TYPE or a UNION_TYPE. A class declared with the union tag is represented by a UNION_TYPE, while classes declared with either the struct or the class tag are represented by RECORD_TYPEs. You can use the CLASSTYPE_DECLARED_CLASS macro to discern whether or not a particular type is a class as opposed to a struct. This macro will be true only for classes declared with the class tag.

Almost all non-function members are available on the TYPE_FIELDS list. Given one member, the next can be found by following the TREE_CHAIN. You should not depend in any way on the order in which fields appear on this list. All nodes on this list will be `DECL' nodes. A FIELD_DECL is used to represent a non-static data member, a VAR_DECL is used to represent a static data member, and a TYPE_DECL is used to represent a type. Note that the CONST_DECL for an enumeration constant will appear on this list, if the enumeration type was declared in the class. (Of course, the TYPE_DECL for the enumeration type will appear here as well.) There are no entries for base classes on this list. In particular, there is no FIELD_DECL for the "base-class portion" of an object.

The TYPE_VFIELD is a compiler-generated field used to point to virtual function tables. It may or may not appear on the TYPE_FIELDS list. However, back ends should handle the TYPE_VFIELD just like all the entries on the TYPE_FIELDS list.

The function members are available on the TYPE_METHODS list. Again, subsequent members are found by following the TREE_CHAIN field. If a function is overloaded, each of the overloaded functions appears; no OVERLOAD nodes appear on the TYPE_METHODS list. Implicitly declared functions (including default constructors, copy constructors, assignment operators, and destructors) will appear on this list as well.

Every class has an associated binfo, which can be obtained with TYPE_BINFO. Binfos are used to represent base-classes. The binfo given by TYPE_BINFO is the degenerate case, whereby every class is considered to be its own base-class. The base classes for a particular binfo can be obtained with BINFO_BASETYPES. These base-classes are themselves binfos. The class type associated with a binfo is given by BINFO_TYPE. It is always the case that BINFO_TYPE (TYPE_BINFO (x)) is the same type as x, up to qualifiers. However, it is not always the case that TYPE_BINFO (BINFO_TYPE (y)) is always the same binfo as y. The reason is that if y is a binfo representing a base-class B of a derived class D, then BINFO_TYPE (y) will be B, and TYPE_BINFO (BINFO_TYPE (y)) will be B as its own base-class, rather than as a base-class of D.

The BINFO_BASETYPES is a TREE_VEC (see section 7.2.3 Containers). Base types appear in left-to-right order in this vector. You can tell whether or public, protected, or private inheritance was used by using the TREE_VIA_PUBLIC, TREE_VIA_PROTECTED, and TREE_VIA_PRIVATE macros. Each of these macros takes a BINFO and is true if and only if the indicated kind of inheritance was used. If TREE_VIA_VIRTUAL holds of a binfo, then its BINFO_TYPE was inherited from virtually.

The following macros can be used on a tree node representing a class-type.

LOCAL_CLASS_P
This predicate holds if the class is local class i.e. declared inside a function body.

TYPE_POLYMORPHIC_P
This predicate holds if the class has at least one virtual function (declared or inherited).

TYPE_HAS_DEFAULT_CONSTRUCTOR
This predicate holds whenever its argument represents a class-type with default constructor.

CLASSTYPE_HAS_MUTABLE
TYPE_HAS_MUTABLE_P
These predicates hold for a class-type having a mutable data member.

CLASSTYPE_NON_POD_P
This predicate holds only for class-types that are not PODs.

TYPE_HAS_NEW_OPERATOR
This predicate holds for a class-type that defines operator new.

TYPE_HAS_ARRAY_NEW_OPERATOR
This predicate holds for a class-type for which operator new[] is defined.

TYPE_OVERLOADS_CALL_EXPR
This predicate holds for class-type for which the function call operator() is overloaded.

TYPE_OVERLOADS_ARRAY_REF
This predicate holds for a class-type that overloads operator[]

TYPE_OVERLOADS_ARROW
This predicate holds for a class-type for which operator-> is overloaded.


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7.5 Declarations

This section covers the various kinds of declarations that appear in the internal representation, except for declarations of functions (represented by FUNCTION_DECL nodes), which are described in 7.6 Functions.

Some macros can be used with any kind of declaration. These include:

DECL_NAME
This macro returns an IDENTIFIER_NODE giving the name of the entity.

TREE_TYPE
This macro returns the type of the entity declared.

DECL_SOURCE_FILE
This macro returns the name of the file in which the entity was declared, as a char*. For an entity declared implicitly by the compiler (like __builtin_memcpy), this will be the string "<internal>".

DECL_SOURCE_LINE
This macro returns the line number at which the entity was declared, as an int.

DECL_ARTIFICIAL
This predicate holds if the declaration was implicitly generated by the compiler. For example, this predicate will hold of an implicitly declared member function, or of the TYPE_DECL implicitly generated for a class type. Recall that in C++ code like:
 
struct S {};
is roughly equivalent to C code like:
 
struct S {};
typedef struct S S;
The implicitly generated typedef declaration is represented by a TYPE_DECL for which DECL_ARTIFICIAL holds.

DECL_NAMESPACE_SCOPE_P
This predicate holds if the entity was declared at a namespace scope.

DECL_CLASS_SCOPE_P
This predicate holds if the entity was declared at a class scope.

DECL_FUNCTION_SCOPE_P
This predicate holds if the entity was declared inside a function body.

The various kinds of declarations include:

LABEL_DECL
These nodes are used to represent labels in function bodies. For more information, see 7.6 Functions. These nodes only appear in block scopes.

CONST_DECL
These nodes are used to represent enumeration constants. The value of the constant is given by DECL_INITIAL which will be an INTEGER_CST with the same type as the TREE_TYPE of the CONST_DECL, i.e., an ENUMERAL_TYPE.

RESULT_DECL
These nodes represent the value returned by a function. When a value is assigned to a RESULT_DECL, that indicates that the value should be returned, via bitwise copy, by the function. You can use DECL_SIZE and DECL_ALIGN on a RESULT_DECL, just as with a VAR_DECL.

TYPE_DECL
These nodes represent typedef declarations. The TREE_TYPE is the type declared to have the name given by DECL_NAME. In some cases, there is no associated name.

VAR_DECL
These nodes represent variables with namespace or block scope, as well as static data members. The DECL_SIZE and DECL_ALIGN are analogous to TYPE_SIZE and TYPE_ALIGN. For a declaration, you should always use the DECL_SIZE and DECL_ALIGN rather than the TYPE_SIZE and TYPE_ALIGN given by the TREE_TYPE, since special attributes may have been applied to the variable to give it a particular size and alignment. You may use the predicates DECL_THIS_STATIC or DECL_THIS_EXTERN to test whether the storage class specifiers static or extern were used to declare a variable.

If this variable is initialized (but does not require a constructor), the DECL_INITIAL will be an expression for the initializer. The initializer should be evaluated, and a bitwise copy into the variable performed. If the DECL_INITIAL is the error_mark_node, there is an initializer, but it is given by an explicit statement later in the code; no bitwise copy is required.

GCC provides an extension that allows either automatic variables, or global variables, to be placed in particular registers. This extension is being used for a particular VAR_DECL if DECL_REGISTER holds for the VAR_DECL, and if DECL_ASSEMBLER_NAME is not equal to DECL_NAME. In that case, DECL_ASSEMBLER_NAME is the name of the register into which the variable will be placed.

PARM_DECL
Used to represent a parameter to a function. Treat these nodes similarly to VAR_DECL nodes. These nodes only appear in the DECL_ARGUMENTS for a FUNCTION_DECL.

The DECL_ARG_TYPE for a PARM_DECL is the type that will actually be used when a value is passed to this function. It may be a wider type than the TREE_TYPE of the parameter; for example, the ordinary type might be short while the DECL_ARG_TYPE is int.

FIELD_DECL
These nodes represent non-static data members. The DECL_SIZE and DECL_ALIGN behave as for VAR_DECL nodes. The DECL_FIELD_BITPOS gives the first bit used for this field, as an INTEGER_CST. These values are indexed from zero, where zero indicates the first bit in the object.

If DECL_C_BIT_FIELD holds, this field is a bit-field.

NAMESPACE_DECL
See section 7.4.1 Namespaces.

TEMPLATE_DECL

These nodes are used to represent class, function, and variable (static data member) templates. The DECL_TEMPLATE_SPECIALIZATIONS are a TREE_LIST. The TREE_VALUE of each node in the list is a TEMPLATE_DECLs or FUNCTION_DECLs representing specializations (including instantiations) of this template. Back ends can safely ignore TEMPLATE_DECLs, but should examine FUNCTION_DECL nodes on the specializations list just as they would ordinary FUNCTION_DECL nodes.

For a class template, the DECL_TEMPLATE_INSTANTIATIONS list contains the instantiations. The TREE_VALUE of each node is an instantiation of the class. The DECL_TEMPLATE_SPECIALIZATIONS contains partial specializations of the class.

USING_DECL

Back ends can safely ignore these nodes.


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7.6 Functions

A function is represented by a FUNCTION_DECL node. A set of overloaded functions is sometimes represented by a OVERLOAD node.

An OVERLOAD node is not a declaration, so none of the `DECL_' macros should be used on an OVERLOAD. An OVERLOAD node is similar to a TREE_LIST. Use OVL_CURRENT to get the function associated with an OVERLOAD node; use OVL_NEXT to get the next OVERLOAD node in the list of overloaded functions. The macros OVL_CURRENT and OVL_NEXT are actually polymorphic; you can use them to work with FUNCTION_DECL nodes as well as with overloads. In the case of a FUNCTION_DECL, OVL_CURRENT will always return the function itself, and OVL_NEXT will always be NULL_TREE.

To determine the scope of a function, you can use the DECL_REAL_CONTEXT macro. This macro will return the class (either a RECORD_TYPE or a UNION_TYPE) or namespace (a NAMESPACE_DECL) of which the function is a member. For a virtual function, this macro returns the class in which the function was actually defined, not the base class in which the virtual declaration occurred. If a friend function is defined in a class scope, the DECL_CLASS_CONTEXT macro can be used to determine the class in which it was defined. For example, in
 
class C { friend void f() {} };
the DECL_REAL_CONTEXT for f will be the global_namespace, but the DECL_CLASS_CONTEXT will be the RECORD_TYPE for C.

The DECL_REAL_CONTEXT and DECL_CLASS_CONTEXT are not available in C; instead you should simply use DECL_CONTEXT. In C, the DECL_CONTEXT for a function maybe another function. This representation indicates that the GNU nested function extension is in use. For details on the semantics of nested functions, see the GCC Manual. The nested function can refer to local variables in its containing function. Such references are not explicitly marked in the tree structure; back ends must look at the DECL_CONTEXT for the referenced VAR_DECL. If the DECL_CONTEXT for the referenced VAR_DECL is not the same as the function currently being processed, and neither DECL_EXTERNAL nor DECL_STATIC hold, then the reference is to a local variable in a containing function, and the back end must take appropriate action.

7.6.1 Function Basics  Function names, linkage, and so forth.
7.6.2 Function Bodies  The statements that make up a function body.


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7.6.1 Function Basics

The following macros and functions can be used on a FUNCTION_DECL:

DECL_MAIN_P
This predicate holds for a function that is the program entry point ::code.

DECL_NAME
This macro returns the unqualified name of the function, as an IDENTIFIER_NODE. For an instantiation of a function template, the DECL_NAME is the unqualified name of the template, not something like f<int>. The value of DECL_NAME is undefined when used on a constructor, destructor, overloaded operator, or type-conversion operator, or any function that is implicitly generated by the compiler. See below for macros that can be used to distinguish these cases.

DECL_ASSEMBLER_NAME
This macro returns the mangled name of the function, also an IDENTIFIER_NODE. This name does not contain leading underscores on systems that prefix all identifiers with underscores. The mangled name is computed in the same way on all platforms; if special processing is required to deal with the object file format used on a particular platform, it is the responsibility of the back end to perform those modifications. (Of course, the back end should not modify DECL_ASSEMBLER_NAME itself.)

DECL_EXTERNAL
This predicate holds if the function is undefined.

TREE_PUBLIC
This predicate holds if the function has external linkage.

DECL_LOCAL_FUNCTION_P
This predicate holds if the function was declared at block scope, even though it has a global scope.

DECL_ANTICIPATED
This predicate holds if the function is a built-in function but its prototype is not yet explicitly declared.

DECL_EXTERN_C_FUNCTION_P
This predicate holds if the function is declared as an `extern "C"' function.

DECL_LINKONCE_P
This macro holds if multiple copies of this function may be emitted in various translation units. It is the responsibility of the linker to merge the various copies. Template instantiations are the most common example of functions for which DECL_LINKONCE_P holds; G++ instantiates needed templates in all translation units which require them, and then relies on the linker to remove duplicate instantiations.

FIXME: This macro is not yet implemented.

DECL_FUNCTION_MEMBER_P
This macro holds if the function is a member of a class, rather than a member of a namespace.

DECL_STATIC_FUNCTION_P
This predicate holds if the function a static member function.

DECL_NONSTATIC_MEMBER_FUNCTION_P
This macro holds for a non-static member function.

DECL_CONST_MEMFUNC_P
This predicate holds for a const-member function.

DECL_VOLATILE_MEMFUNC_P
This predicate holds for a volatile-member function.

DECL_CONSTRUCTOR_P
This macro holds if the function is a constructor.

DECL_NONCONVERTING_P
This predicate holds if the constructor is a non-converting constructor.

DECL_COMPLETE_CONSTRUCTOR_P
This predicate holds for a function which is a constructor for an object of a complete type.

DECL_BASE_CONSTRUCTOR_P
This predicate holds for a function which is a constructor for a base class sub-object.

DECL_COPY_CONSTRUCTOR_P
This predicate holds for a function which is a copy-constructor.

DECL_DESTRUCTOR_P
This macro holds if the function is a destructor.

DECL_COMPLETE_DESTRUCTOR_P
This predicate holds if the function is the destructor for an object a complete type.

DECL_OVERLOADED_OPERATOR_P
This macro holds if the function is an overloaded operator.

DECL_CONV_FN_P
This macro holds if the function is a type-conversion operator.

DECL_GLOBAL_CTOR_P
This predicate holds if the function is a file-scope initialization function.

DECL_GLOBAL_DTOR_P
This predicate holds if the function is a file-scope finalization function.

DECL_THUNK_P
This predicate holds if the function is a thunk.

These functions represent stub code that adjusts the this pointer and then jumps to another function. When the jumped-to function returns, control is transferred directly to the caller, without returning to the thunk. The first parameter to the thunk is always the this pointer; the thunk should add THUNK_DELTA to this value. (The THUNK_DELTA is an int, not an INTEGER_CST.)

Then, if THUNK_VCALL_OFFSET (an INTEGER_CST) is nonzero the adjusted this pointer must be adjusted again. The complete calculation is given by the following pseudo-code:

 
this += THUNK_DELTA
if (THUNK_VCALL_OFFSET)
  this += (*((ptrdiff_t **) this))[THUNK_VCALL_OFFSET]

Finally, the thunk should jump to the location given by DECL_INITIAL; this will always be an expression for the address of a function.

DECL_NON_THUNK_FUNCTION_P
This predicate holds if the function is not a thunk function.

GLOBAL_INIT_PRIORITY
If either DECL_GLOBAL_CTOR_P or DECL_GLOBAL_DTOR_P holds, then this gives the initialization priority for the function. The linker will arrange that all functions for which DECL_GLOBAL_CTOR_P holds are run in increasing order of priority before main is called. When the program exits, all functions for which DECL_GLOBAL_DTOR_P holds are run in the reverse order.

DECL_ARTIFICIAL
This macro holds if the function was implicitly generated by the compiler, rather than explicitly declared. In addition to implicitly generated class member functions, this macro holds for the special functions created to implement static initialization and destruction, to compute run-time type information, and so forth.

DECL_ARGUMENTS
This macro returns the PARM_DECL for the first argument to the function. Subsequent PARM_DECL nodes can be obtained by following the TREE_CHAIN links.

DECL_RESULT
This macro returns the RESULT_DECL for the function.

TREE_TYPE
This macro returns the FUNCTION_TYPE or METHOD_TYPE for the function.

TYPE_RAISES_EXCEPTIONS
This macro returns the list of exceptions that a (member-)function can raise. The returned list, if non NULL, is comprised of nodes whose TREE_VALUE represents a type.

TYPE_NOTHROW_P
This predicate holds when the exception-specification of its arguments if of the form `()'.

DECL_ARRAY_DELETE_OPERATOR_P
This predicate holds if the function an overloaded operator delete[].


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7.6.2 Function Bodies

A function that has a definition in the current translation unit will have a non-NULL DECL_INITIAL. However, back ends should not make use of the particular value given by DECL_INITIAL.

The DECL_SAVED_TREE macro will give the complete body of the function. This node will usually be a COMPOUND_STMT representing the outermost block of the function, but it may also be a TRY_BLOCK, a RETURN_INIT, or any other valid statement.


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7.6.2.1 Statements

There are tree nodes corresponding to all of the source-level statement constructs. These are enumerated here, together with a list of the various macros that can be used to obtain information about them. There are a few macros that can be used with all statements:

STMT_LINENO
This macro returns the line number for the statement. If the statement spans multiple lines, this value will be the number of the first line on which the statement occurs. Although we mention CASE_LABEL below as if it were a statement, they do not allow the use of STMT_LINENO. There is no way to obtain the line number for a CASE_LABEL.

Statements do not contain information about the file from which they came; that information is implicit in the FUNCTION_DECL from which the statements originate.

STMT_IS_FULL_EXPR_P
In C++, statements normally constitute "full expressions"; temporaries created during a statement are destroyed when the statement is complete. However, G++ sometimes represents expressions by statements; these statements will not have STMT_IS_FULL_EXPR_P set. Temporaries created during such statements should be destroyed when the innermost enclosing statement with STMT_IS_FULL_EXPR_P set is exited.

Here is the list of the various statement nodes, and the macros used to access them. This documentation describes the use of these nodes in non-template functions (including instantiations of template functions). In template functions, the same nodes are used, but sometimes in slightly different ways.

Many of the statements have substatements. For example, a while loop will have a body, which is itself a statement. If the substatement is NULL_TREE, it is considered equivalent to a statement consisting of a single ;, i.e., an expression statement in which the expression has been omitted. A substatement may in fact be a list of statements, connected via their TREE_CHAINs. So, you should always process the statement tree by looping over substatements, like this:
 
void process_stmt (stmt)
     tree stmt;
{
  while (stmt)
    {
      switch (TREE_CODE (stmt))
        {
        case IF_STMT:
          process_stmt (THEN_CLAUSE (stmt));
          /* More processing here.  */
          break;

        ...
        }

      stmt = TREE_CHAIN (stmt);
    }
}
In other words, while the then clause of an if statement in C++ can be only one statement (although that one statement may be a compound statement), the intermediate representation will sometimes use several statements chained together.

ASM_STMT

Used to represent an inline assembly statement. For an inline assembly statement like:
 
asm ("mov x, y");
The ASM_STRING macro will return a STRING_CST node for "mov x, y". If the original statement made use of the extended-assembly syntax, then ASM_OUTPUTS, ASM_INPUTS, and ASM_CLOBBERS will be the outputs, inputs, and clobbers for the statement, represented as STRING_CST nodes. The extended-assembly syntax looks like:
 
asm ("fsinx %1,%0" : "=f" (result) : "f" (angle));
The first string is the ASM_STRING, containing the instruction template. The next two strings are the output and inputs, respectively; this statement has no clobbers. As this example indicates, "plain" assembly statements are merely a special case of extended assembly statements; they have no cv-qualifiers, outputs, inputs, or clobbers. All of the strings will be NUL-terminated, and will contain no embedded NUL-characters.

If the assembly statement is declared volatile, or if the statement was not an extended assembly statement, and is therefore implicitly volatile, then the predicate ASM_VOLATILE_P will hold of the ASM_STMT.

BREAK_STMT

Used to represent a break statement. There are no additional fields.

CASE_LABEL

Use to represent a case label, range of case labels, or a default label. If CASE_LOW is NULL_TREE, then this is a default label. Otherwise, if CASE_HIGH is NULL_TREE, then this is an ordinary case label. In this case, CASE_LOW is an expression giving the value of the label. Both CASE_LOW and CASE_HIGH are INTEGER_CST nodes. These values will have the same type as the condition expression in the switch statement.

Otherwise, if both CASE_LOW and CASE_HIGH are defined, the statement is a range of case labels. Such statements originate with the extension that allows users to write things of the form:
 
case 2 ... 5:
The first value will be CASE_LOW, while the second will be CASE_HIGH.

CLEANUP_STMT

Used to represent an action that should take place upon exit from the enclosing scope. Typically, these actions are calls to destructors for local objects, but back ends cannot rely on this fact. If these nodes are in fact representing such destructors, CLEANUP_DECL will be the VAR_DECL destroyed. Otherwise, CLEANUP_DECL will be NULL_TREE. In any case, the CLEANUP_EXPR is the expression to execute. The cleanups executed on exit from a scope should be run in the reverse order of the order in which the associated CLEANUP_STMTs were encountered.

COMPOUND_STMT

Used to represent a brace-enclosed block. The first substatement is given by COMPOUND_BODY. Subsequent substatements are found by following the TREE_CHAIN link from one substatement to the next. The COMPOUND_BODY will be NULL_TREE if there are no substatements.

CONTINUE_STMT

Used to represent a continue statement. There are no additional fields.

CTOR_STMT

Used to mark the beginning (if CTOR_BEGIN_P holds) or end (if CTOR_END_P holds of the main body of a constructor. See also SUBOBJECT for more information on how to use these nodes.

DECL_STMT

Used to represent a local declaration. The DECL_STMT_DECL macro can be used to obtain the entity declared. This declaration may be a LABEL_DECL, indicating that the label declared is a local label. (As an extension, GCC allows the declaration of labels with scope.) In C, this declaration may be a FUNCTION_DECL, indicating the use of the GCC nested function extension. For more information, see section 7.6 Functions.

DO_STMT

Used to represent a do loop. The body of the loop is given by DO_BODY while the termination condition for the loop is given by DO_COND. The condition for a do-statement is always an expression.

EMPTY_CLASS_EXPR

Used to represent a temporary object of a class with no data whose address is never taken. (All such objects are interchangeable.) The TREE_TYPE represents the type of the object.

EXPR_STMT

Used to represent an expression statement. Use EXPR_STMT_EXPR to obtain the expression.

FILE_STMT

Used to record a change in filename within the body of a function. Use FILE_STMT_FILENAME to obtain the new filename.

FOR_STMT

Used to represent a for statement. The FOR_INIT_STMT is the initialization statement for the loop. The FOR_COND is the termination condition. The FOR_EXPR is the expression executed right before the FOR_COND on each loop iteration; often, this expression increments a counter. The body of the loop is given by FOR_BODY. Note that FOR_INIT_STMT and FOR_BODY return statements, while FOR_COND and FOR_EXPR return expressions.

GOTO_STMT

Used to represent a goto statement. The GOTO_DESTINATION will usually be a LABEL_DECL. However, if the "computed goto" extension has been used, the GOTO_DESTINATION will be an arbitrary expression indicating the destination. This expression will always have pointer type. Additionally the GOTO_FAKE_P flag is set whenever the goto statement does not come from source code, but it is generated implicitly by the compiler. This is used for branch prediction.

HANDLER

Used to represent a C++ catch block. The HANDLER_TYPE is the type of exception that will be caught by this handler; it is equal (by pointer equality) to CATCH_ALL_TYPE if this handler is for all types. HANDLER_PARMS is the DECL_STMT for the catch parameter, and HANDLER_BODY is the COMPOUND_STMT for the block itself.

IF_STMT

Used to represent an if statement. The IF_COND is the expression.

If the condition is a TREE_LIST, then the TREE_PURPOSE is a statement (usually a DECL_STMT). Each time the condition is evaluated, the statement should be executed. Then, the TREE_VALUE should be used as the conditional expression itself. This representation is used to handle C++ code like this:

 
if (int i = 7) ...

where there is a new local variable (or variables) declared within the condition.

The THEN_CLAUSE represents the statement given by the then condition, while the ELSE_CLAUSE represents the statement given by the else condition.

LABEL_STMT

Used to represent a label. The LABEL_DECL declared by this statement can be obtained with the LABEL_STMT_LABEL macro. The IDENTIFIER_NODE giving the name of the label can be obtained from the LABEL_DECL with DECL_NAME.

RETURN_INIT

If the function uses the G++ "named return value" extension, meaning that the function has been defined like:
 
S f(int) return s {...}
then there will be a RETURN_INIT. There is never a named returned value for a constructor. The first argument to the RETURN_INIT is the name of the object returned; the second argument is the initializer for the object. The object is initialized when the RETURN_INIT is encountered. The object referred to is the actual object returned; this extension is a manual way of doing the "return-value optimization." Therefore, the object must actually be constructed in the place where the object will be returned.

RETURN_STMT

Used to represent a return statement. The RETURN_EXPR is the expression returned; it will be NULL_TREE if the statement was just
 
return;

SCOPE_STMT

A scope-statement represents the beginning or end of a scope. If SCOPE_BEGIN_P holds, this statement represents the beginning of a scope; if SCOPE_END_P holds this statement represents the end of a scope. On exit from a scope, all cleanups from CLEANUP_STMTs occurring in the scope must be run, in reverse order to the order in which they were encountered. If SCOPE_NULLIFIED_P or SCOPE_NO_CLEANUPS_P holds of the scope, back ends should behave as if the SCOPE_STMT were not present at all.

SUBOBJECT

In a constructor, these nodes are used to mark the point at which a subobject of this is fully constructed. If, after this point, an exception is thrown before a CTOR_STMT with CTOR_END_P set is encountered, the SUBOBJECT_CLEANUP must be executed. The cleanups must be executed in the reverse order in which they appear.

SWITCH_STMT

Used to represent a switch statement. The SWITCH_COND is the expression on which the switch is occurring. See the documentation for an IF_STMT for more information on the representation used for the condition. The SWITCH_BODY is the body of the switch statement. The SWITCH_TYPE is the original type of switch expression as given in the source, before any compiler conversions.

TRY_BLOCK
Used to represent a try block. The body of the try block is given by TRY_STMTS. Each of the catch blocks is a HANDLER node. The first handler is given by TRY_HANDLERS. Subsequent handlers are obtained by following the TREE_CHAIN link from one handler to the next. The body of the handler is given by HANDLER_BODY.

If CLEANUP_P holds of the TRY_BLOCK, then the TRY_HANDLERS will not be a HANDLER node. Instead, it will be an expression that should be executed if an exception is thrown in the try block. It must rethrow the exception after executing that code. And, if an exception is thrown while the expression is executing, terminate must be called.

USING_STMT
Used to represent a using directive. The namespace is given by USING_STMT_NAMESPACE, which will be a NAMESPACE_DECL. This node is needed inside template functions, to implement using directives during instantiation.

WHILE_STMT

Used to represent a while loop. The WHILE_COND is the termination condition for the loop. See the documentation for an IF_STMT for more information on the representation used for the condition.

The WHILE_BODY is the body of the loop.


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7.7 Attributes in trees

Attributes, as specified using the __attribute__ keyword, are represented internally as a TREE_LIST. The TREE_PURPOSE is the name of the attribute, as an IDENTIFIER_NODE. The TREE_VALUE is a TREE_LIST of the arguments of the attribute, if any, or NULL_TREE if there are no arguments; the arguments are stored as the TREE_VALUE of successive entries in the list, and may be identifiers or expressions. The TREE_CHAIN of the attribute is the next attribute in a list of attributes applying to the same declaration or type, or NULL_TREE if there are no further attributes in the list.

Attributes may be attached to declarations and to types; these attributes may be accessed with the following macros. All attributes are stored in this way, and many also cause other changes to the declaration or type or to other internal compiler data structures.

Tree Macro: tree DECL_ATTRIBUTES (tree decl)
This macro returns the attributes on the declaration decl.

Tree Macro: tree TYPE_ATTRIBUTES (tree type)
This macro returns the attributes on the type type.


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7.8 Expressions

The internal representation for expressions is for the most part quite straightforward. However, there are a few facts that one must bear in mind. In particular, the expression "tree" is actually a directed acyclic graph. (For example there may be many references to the integer constant zero throughout the source program; many of these will be represented by the same expression node.) You should not rely on certain kinds of node being shared, nor should rely on certain kinds of nodes being unshared.

The following macros can be used with all expression nodes:

TREE_TYPE
Returns the type of the expression. This value may not be precisely the same type that would be given the expression in the original program.

In what follows, some nodes that one might expect to always have type bool are documented to have either integral or boolean type. At some point in the future, the C front end may also make use of this same intermediate representation, and at this point these nodes will certainly have integral type. The previous sentence is not meant to imply that the C++ front end does not or will not give these nodes integral type.

Below, we list the various kinds of expression nodes. Except where noted otherwise, the operands to an expression are accessed using the TREE_OPERAND macro. For example, to access the first operand to a binary plus expression expr, use:

 
TREE_OPERAND (expr, 0)
As this example indicates, the operands are zero-indexed.

The table below begins with constants, moves on to unary expressions, then proceeds to binary expressions, and concludes with various other kinds of expressions:

INTEGER_CST
These nodes represent integer constants. Note that the type of these constants is obtained with TREE_TYPE; they are not always of type int. In particular, char constants are represented with INTEGER_CST nodes. The value of the integer constant e is given by @example ((TREE_INT_CST_HIGH (e) << HOST_BITS_PER_WIDE_INT) + TREE_INST_CST_LOW (e)) HOST_BITS_PER_WIDE_INT is at least thirty-two on all platforms. Both TREE_INT_CST_HIGH and TREE_INT_CST_LOW return a HOST_WIDE_INT. The value of an INTEGER_CST is interpreted as a signed or unsigned quantity depending on the type of the constant. In general, the expression given above will overflow, so it should not be used to calculate the value of the constant.

The variable integer_zero_node is an integer constant with value zero. Similarly, integer_one_node is an integer constant with value one. The size_zero_node and size_one_node variables are analogous, but have type size_t rather than int.

The function tree_int_cst_lt is a predicate which holds if its first argument is less than its second. Both constants are assumed to have the same signedness (i.e., either both should be signed or both should be unsigned.) The full width of the constant is used when doing the comparison; the usual rules about promotions and conversions are ignored. Similarly, tree_int_cst_equal holds if the two constants are equal. The tree_int_cst_sgn function returns the sign of a constant. The value is 1, 0, or -1 according on whether the constant is greater than, equal to, or less than zero. Again, the signedness of the constant's type is taken into account; an unsigned constant is never less than zero, no matter what its bit-pattern.

REAL_CST

FIXME: Talk about how to obtain representations of this constant, do comparisons, and so forth.

COMPLEX_CST
These nodes are used to represent complex number constants, that is a __complex__ whose parts are constant nodes. The TREE_REALPART and TREE_IMAGPART return the real and the imaginary parts respectively.

VECTOR_CST
These nodes are used to represent vector constants, whose parts are constant nodes. Each individual constant node is either an integer or a double constant node. The first operand is a TREE_LIST of the constant nodes and is accessed through TREE_VECTOR_CST_ELTS.

STRING_CST
These nodes represent string-constants. The TREE_STRING_LENGTH returns the length of the string, as an int. The TREE_STRING_POINTER is a char* containing the string itself. The string may not be NUL-terminated, and it may contain embedded NUL characters. Therefore, the TREE_STRING_LENGTH includes the trailing NUL if it is present.

For wide string constants, the TREE_STRING_LENGTH is the number of bytes in the string, and the TREE_STRING_POINTER points to an array of the bytes of the string, as represented on the target system (that is, as integers in the target endianness). Wide and non-wide string constants are distinguished only by the TREE_TYPE of the STRING_CST.

FIXME: The formats of string constants are not well-defined when the target system bytes are not the same width as host system bytes.

PTRMEM_CST
These nodes are used to represent pointer-to-member constants. The PTRMEM_CST_CLASS is the class type (either a RECORD_TYPE or UNION_TYPE within which the pointer points), and the PTRMEM_CST_MEMBER is the declaration for the pointed to object. Note that the DECL_CONTEXT for the PTRMEM_CST_MEMBER is in general different from the PTRMEM_CST_CLASS. For example, given:
 
struct B { int i; };
struct D : public B {};
int D::*dp = &D::i;
The PTRMEM_CST_CLASS for &D::i is D, even though the DECL_CONTEXT for the PTRMEM_CST_MEMBER is B, since B::i is a member of B, not D.

VAR_DECL

These nodes represent variables, including static data members. For more information, see section 7.5 Declarations.

NEGATE_EXPR
These nodes represent unary negation of the single operand, for both integer and floating-point types. The type of negation can be determined by looking at the type of the expression.

BIT_NOT_EXPR
These nodes represent bitwise complement, and will always have integral type. The only operand is the value to be complemented.

TRUTH_NOT_EXPR
These nodes represent logical negation, and will always have integral (or boolean) type. The operand is the value being negated.

PREDECREMENT_EXPR
PREINCREMENT_EXPR
POSTDECREMENT_EXPR
POSTINCREMENT_EXPR
These nodes represent increment and decrement expressions. The value of the single operand is computed, and the operand incremented or decremented. In the case of PREDECREMENT_EXPR and PREINCREMENT_EXPR, the value of the expression is the value resulting after the increment or decrement; in the case of POSTDECREMENT_EXPR and POSTINCREMENT_EXPR is the value before the increment or decrement occurs. The type of the operand, like that of the result, will be either integral, boolean, or floating-point.

ADDR_EXPR
These nodes are used to represent the address of an object. (These expressions will always have pointer or reference type.) The operand may be another expression, or it may be a declaration.

As an extension, GCC allows users to take the address of a label. In this case, the operand of the ADDR_EXPR will be a LABEL_DECL. The type of such an expression is void*.

If the object addressed is not an lvalue, a temporary is created, and the address of the temporary is used.

INDIRECT_REF
These nodes are used to represent the object pointed to by a pointer. The operand is the pointer being dereferenced; it will always have pointer or reference type.

FIX_TRUNC_EXPR
These nodes represent conversion of a floating-point value to an integer. The single operand will have a floating-point type, while the the complete expression will have an integral (or boolean) type. The operand is rounded towards zero.

FLOAT_EXPR
These nodes represent conversion of an integral (or boolean) value to a floating-point value. The single operand will have integral type, while the complete expression will have a floating-point type.

FIXME: How is the operand supposed to be rounded? Is this dependent on `-mieee'?

COMPLEX_EXPR
These nodes are used to represent complex numbers constructed from two expressions of the same (integer or real) type. The first operand is the real part and the second operand is the imaginary part.

CONJ_EXPR
These nodes represent the conjugate of their operand.

REALPART_EXPR
IMAGPART_EXPR
These nodes represent respectively the real and the imaginary parts of complex numbers (their sole argument).

NON_LVALUE_EXPR
These nodes indicate that their one and only operand is not an lvalue. A back end can treat these identically to the single operand.

NOP_EXPR
These nodes are used to represent conversions that do not require any code-generation. For example, conversion of a char* to an int* does not require any code be generated; such a conversion is represented by a NOP_EXPR. The single operand is the expression to be converted. The conversion from a pointer to a reference is also represented with a NOP_EXPR.

CONVERT_EXPR
These nodes are similar to NOP_EXPRs, but are used in those situations where code may need to be generated. For example, if an int* is converted to an int code may need to be generated on some platforms. These nodes are never used for C++-specific conversions, like conversions between pointers to different classes in an inheritance hierarchy. Any adjustments that need to be made in such cases are always indicated explicitly. Similarly, a user-defined conversion is never represented by a CONVERT_EXPR; instead, the function calls are made explicit.

THROW_EXPR
These nodes represent throw expressions. The single operand is an expression for the code that should be executed to throw the exception. However, there is one implicit action not represented in that expression; namely the call to __throw. This function takes no arguments. If setjmp/longjmp exceptions are used, the function __sjthrow is called instead. The normal GCC back end uses the function emit_throw to generate this code; you can examine this function to see what needs to be done.

LSHIFT_EXPR
RSHIFT_EXPR
These nodes represent left and right shifts, respectively. The first operand is the value to shift; it will always be of integral type. The second operand is an expression for the number of bits by which to shift. Right shift should be treated as arithmetic, i.e., the high-order bits should be zero-filled when the expression has unsigned type and filled with the sign bit when the expression has signed type. Note that the result is undefined if the second operand is larger than the first operand's type size.

BIT_IOR_EXPR
BIT_XOR_EXPR
BIT_AND_EXPR
These nodes represent bitwise inclusive or, bitwise exclusive or, and bitwise and, respectively. Both operands will always have integral type.

TRUTH_ANDIF_EXPR
TRUTH_ORIF_EXPR
These nodes represent logical and and logical or, respectively. These operators are not strict; i.e., the second operand is evaluated only if the value of the expression is not determined by evaluation of the first operand. The type of the operands, and the result type, is always of boolean or integral type.

TRUTH_AND_EXPR
TRUTH_OR_EXPR
TRUTH_XOR_EXPR
These nodes represent logical and, logical or, and logical exclusive or. They are strict; both arguments are always evaluated. There are no corresponding operators in C or C++, but the front end will sometimes generate these expressions anyhow, if it can tell that strictness does not matter.

PLUS_EXPR
MINUS_EXPR
MULT_EXPR
TRUNC_DIV_EXPR
TRUNC_MOD_EXPR
RDIV_EXPR
These nodes represent various binary arithmetic operations. Respectively, these operations are addition, subtraction (of the second operand from the first), multiplication, integer division, integer remainder, and floating-point division. The operands to the first three of these may have either integral or floating type, but there will never be case in which one operand is of floating type and the other is of integral type.

The result of a TRUNC_DIV_EXPR is always rounded towards zero. The TRUNC_MOD_EXPR of two operands a and b is always a - a/b where the division is as if computed by a TRUNC_DIV_EXPR.

ARRAY_REF
These nodes represent array accesses. The first operand is the array; the second is the index. To calculate the address of the memory accessed, you must scale the index by the size of the type of the array elements. The type of these expressions must be the type of a component of the array.

ARRAY_RANGE_REF
These nodes represent access to a range (or "slice") of an array. The operands are the same as that for ARRAY_REF and have the same meanings. The type of these expressions must be an array whose component type is the same as that of the first operand. The range of that array type determines the amount of data these expressions access.

EXACT_DIV_EXPR
Document.

LT_EXPR
LE_EXPR
GT_EXPR
GE_EXPR
EQ_EXPR
NE_EXPR

These nodes represent the less than, less than or equal to, greater than, greater than or equal to, equal, and not equal comparison operators. The first and second operand with either be both of integral type or both of floating type. The result type of these expressions will always be of integral or boolean type.

MODIFY_EXPR
These nodes represent assignment. The left-hand side is the first operand; the right-hand side is the second operand. The left-hand side will be a VAR_DECL, INDIRECT_REF, COMPONENT_REF, or other lvalue.

These nodes are used to represent not only assignment with `=' but also compound assignments (like `+='), by reduction to `=' assignment. In other words, the representation for `i += 3' looks just like that for `i = i + 3'.

INIT_EXPR
These nodes are just like MODIFY_EXPR, but are used only when a variable is initialized, rather than assigned to subsequently.

COMPONENT_REF
These nodes represent non-static data member accesses. The first operand is the object (rather than a pointer to it); the second operand is the FIELD_DECL for the data member.

COMPOUND_EXPR
These nodes represent comma-expressions. The first operand is an expression whose value is computed and thrown away prior to the evaluation of the second operand. The value of the entire expression is the value of the second operand.

COND_EXPR
These nodes represent ?: expressions. The first operand is of boolean or integral type. If it evaluates to a nonzero value, the second operand should be evaluated, and returned as the value of the expression. Otherwise, the third operand is evaluated, and returned as the value of the expression. As a GNU extension, the middle operand of the ?: operator may be omitted in the source, like this:

 
x ? : 3
which is equivalent to

 
x ? x : 3

assuming that x is an expression without side-effects. However, in the case that the first operation causes side effects, the side-effects occur only once. Consumers of the internal representation do not need to worry about this oddity; the second operand will be always be present in the internal representation.

CALL_EXPR
These nodes are used to represent calls to functions, including non-static member functions. The first operand is a pointer to the function to call; it is always an expression whose type is a POINTER_TYPE. The second argument is a TREE_LIST. The arguments to the call appear left-to-right in the list. The TREE_VALUE of each list node contains the expression corresponding to that argument. (The value of TREE_PURPOSE for these nodes is unspecified, and should be ignored.) For non-static member functions, there will be an operand corresponding to the this pointer. There will always be expressions corresponding to all of the arguments, even if the function is declared with default arguments and some arguments are not explicitly provided at the call sites.

STMT_EXPR
These nodes are used to represent GCC's statement-expression extension. The statement-expression extension allows code like this:
 
int f() { return ({ int j; j = 3; j + 7; }); }
In other words, an sequence of statements may occur where a single expression would normally appear. The STMT_EXPR node represents such an expression. The STMT_EXPR_STMT gives the statement contained in the expression; this is always a COMPOUND_STMT. The value of the expression is the value of the last sub-statement in the COMPOUND_STMT. More precisely, the value is the value computed by the last EXPR_STMT in the outermost scope of the COMPOUND_STMT. For example, in:
 
({ 3; })
the value is 3 while in:
 
({ if (x) { 3; } })
(represented by a nested COMPOUND_STMT), there is no value. If the STMT_EXPR does not yield a value, it's type will be void.

BIND_EXPR
These nodes represent local blocks. The first operand is a list of temporary variables, connected via their TREE_CHAIN field. These will never require cleanups. The scope of these variables is just the body of the BIND_EXPR. The body of the BIND_EXPR is the second operand.

LOOP_EXPR
These nodes represent "infinite" loops. The LOOP_EXPR_BODY represents the body of the loop. It should be executed forever, unless an EXIT_EXPR is encountered.

EXIT_EXPR
These nodes represent conditional exits from the nearest enclosing LOOP_EXPR. The single operand is the condition; if it is nonzero, then the loop should be exited. An EXIT_EXPR will only appear within a LOOP_EXPR.

CLEANUP_POINT_EXPR
These nodes represent full-expressions. The single operand is an expression to evaluate. Any destructor calls engendered by the creation of temporaries during the evaluation of that expression should be performed immediately after the expression is evaluated.

CONSTRUCTOR
These nodes represent the brace-enclosed initializers for a structure or array. The first operand is reserved for use by the back end. The second operand is a TREE_LIST. If the TREE_TYPE of the CONSTRUCTOR is a RECORD_TYPE or UNION_TYPE, then the TREE_PURPOSE of each node in the TREE_LIST will be a FIELD_DECL and the TREE_VALUE of each node will be the expression used to initialize that field. You should not depend on the fields appearing in any particular order, nor should you assume that all fields will be represented. Unrepresented fields may be assigned any value.

If the TREE_TYPE of the CONSTRUCTOR is an ARRAY_TYPE, then the TREE_PURPOSE of each element in the TREE_LIST will be an INTEGER_CST. This constant indicates which element of the array (indexed from zero) is being assigned to; again, the TREE_VALUE is the corresponding initializer. If the TREE_PURPOSE is NULL_TREE, then the initializer is for the next available array element.

Conceptually, before any initialization is done, the entire area of storage is initialized to zero.

COMPOUND_LITERAL_EXPR
These nodes represent ISO C99 compound literals. The COMPOUND_LITERAL_EXPR_DECL_STMT is a DECL_STMT containing an anonymous VAR_DECL for the unnamed object represented by the compound literal; the DECL_INITIAL of that VAR_DECL is a CONSTRUCTOR representing the brace-enclosed list of initializers in the compound literal. That anonymous VAR_DECL can also be accessed directly by the COMPOUND_LITERAL_EXPR_DECL macro.

SAVE_EXPR

A SAVE_EXPR represents an expression (possibly involving side-effects) that is used more than once. The side-effects should occur only the first time the expression is evaluated. Subsequent uses should just reuse the computed value. The first operand to the SAVE_EXPR is the expression to evaluate. The side-effects should be executed where the SAVE_EXPR is first encountered in a depth-first preorder traversal of the expression tree.

TARGET_EXPR
A TARGET_EXPR represents a temporary object. The first operand is a VAR_DECL for the temporary variable. The second operand is the initializer for the temporary. The initializer is evaluated, and copied (bitwise) into the temporary.

Often, a TARGET_EXPR occurs on the right-hand side of an assignment, or as the second operand to a comma-expression which is itself the right-hand side of an assignment, etc. In this case, we say that the TARGET_EXPR is "normal"; otherwise, we say it is "orphaned". For a normal TARGET_EXPR the temporary variable should be treated as an alias for the left-hand side of the assignment, rather than as a new temporary variable.

The third operand to the TARGET_EXPR, if present, is a cleanup-expression (i.e., destructor call) for the temporary. If this expression is orphaned, then this expression must be executed when the statement containing this expression is complete. These cleanups must always be executed in the order opposite to that in which they were encountered. Note that if a temporary is created on one branch of a conditional operator (i.e., in the second or third operand to a COND_EXPR), the cleanup must be run only if that branch is actually executed.

See STMT_IS_FULL_EXPR_P for more information about running these cleanups.

AGGR_INIT_EXPR
An AGGR_INIT_EXPR represents the initialization as the return value of a function call, or as the result of a constructor. An AGGR_INIT_EXPR will only appear as the second operand of a TARGET_EXPR. The first operand to the AGGR_INIT_EXPR is the address of a function to call, just as in a CALL_EXPR. The second operand are the arguments to pass that function, as a TREE_LIST, again in a manner similar to that of a CALL_EXPR. The value of the expression is that returned by the function.

If AGGR_INIT_VIA_CTOR_P holds of the AGGR_INIT_EXPR, then the initialization is via a constructor call. The address of the third operand of the AGGR_INIT_EXPR, which is always a VAR_DECL, is taken, and this value replaces the first argument in the argument list. In this case, the value of the expression is the VAR_DECL given by the third operand to the AGGR_INIT_EXPR; constructors do not return a value.

VTABLE_REF
A VTABLE_REF indicates that the interior expression computes a value that is a vtable entry. It is used with `-fvtable-gc' to track the reference through to front end to the middle end, at which point we transform this to a REG_VTABLE_REF note, which survives the balance of code generation.

The first operand is the expression that computes the vtable reference. The second operand is the VAR_DECL of the vtable. The third operand is an INTEGER_CST of the byte offset into the vtable.


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8. RTL Representation

Most of the work of the compiler is done on an intermediate representation called register transfer language. In this language, the instructions to be output are described, pretty much one by one, in an algebraic form that describes what the instruction does.

RTL is inspired by Lisp lists. It has both an internal form, made up of structures that point at other structures, and a textual form that is used in the machine description and in printed debugging dumps. The textual form uses nested parentheses to indicate the pointers in the internal form.

8.1 RTL Object Types  Expressions vs vectors vs strings vs integers.
8.2 RTL Classes and Formats  Categories of RTL expression objects, and their structure.
8.3 Access to Operands  Macros to access expression operands or vector elts.
8.4 Flags in an RTL Expression  Other flags in an RTL expression.
8.5 Machine Modes  Describing the size and format of a datum.
8.6 Constant Expression Types  Expressions with constant values.
8.7 Registers and Memory  Expressions representing register contents or memory.
8.8 RTL Expressions for Arithmetic  Expressions representing arithmetic on other expressions.
8.9 Comparison Operations  Expressions representing comparison of expressions.
8.10 Bit-Fields  Expressions representing bit-fields in memory or reg.
8.11 Vector Operations  Expressions involving vector datatypes.
8.12 Conversions  Extending, truncating, floating or fixing.
8.13 Declarations  Declaring volatility, constancy, etc.
8.14 Side Effect Expressions  Expressions for storing in registers, etc.
8.15 Embedded Side-Effects on Addresses  Embedded side-effects for autoincrement addressing.
8.16 Assembler Instructions as Expressions  Representing asm with operands.
8.17 Insns  Expression types for entire insns.
8.18 RTL Representation of Function-Call Insns  RTL representation of function call insns.
8.19 Structure Sharing Assumptions  Some expressions are unique; others *must* be copied.
8.20 Reading RTL  Reading textual RTL from a file.


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8.1 RTL Object Types

RTL uses five kinds of objects: expressions, integers, wide integers, strings and vectors. Expressions are the most important ones. An RTL expression ("RTX", for short) is a C structure, but it is usually referred to with a pointer; a type that is given the typedef name rtx.

An integer is simply an int; their written form uses decimal digits. A wide integer is an integral object whose type is HOST_WIDE_INT; their written form uses decimal digits.

A string is a sequence of characters. In core it is represented as a char * in usual C fashion, and it is written in C syntax as well. However, strings in RTL may never be null. If you write an empty string in a machine description, it is represented in core as a null pointer rather than as a pointer to a null character. In certain contexts, these null pointers instead of strings are valid. Within RTL code, strings are most commonly found inside symbol_ref expressions, but they appear in other contexts in the RTL expressions that make up machine descriptions.

In a machine description, strings are normally written with double quotes, as you would in C. However, strings in machine descriptions may extend over many lines, which is invalid C, and adjacent string constants are not concatenated as they are in C. Any string constant may be surrounded with a single set of parentheses. Sometimes this makes the machine description easier to read.

There is also a special syntax for strings, which can be useful when C code is embedded in a machine description. Wherever a string can appear, it is also valid to write a C-style brace block. The entire brace block, including the outermost pair of braces, is considered to be the string constant. Double quote characters inside the braces are not special. Therefore, if you write string constants in the C code, you need not escape each quote character with a backslash.

A vector contains an arbitrary number of pointers to expressions. The number of elements in the vector is explicitly present in the vector. The written form of a vector consists of square brackets (`[...]') surrounding the elements, in sequence and with whitespace separating them. Vectors of length zero are not created; null pointers are used instead.

Expressions are classified by expression codes (also called RTX codes). The expression code is a name defined in `rtl.def', which is also (in upper case) a C enumeration constant. The possible expression codes and their meanings are machine-independent. The code of an RTX can be extracted with the macro GET_CODE (x) and altered with PUT_CODE (x, newcode).

The expression code determines how many operands the expression contains, and what kinds of objects they are. In RTL, unlike Lisp, you cannot tell by looking at an operand what kind of object it is. Instead, you must know from its context--from the expression code of the containing expression. For example, in an expression of code subreg, the first operand is to be regarded as an expression and the second operand as an integer. In an expression of code plus, there are two operands, both of which are to be regarded as expressions. In a symbol_ref expression, there is one operand, which is to be regarded as a string.

Expressions are written as parentheses containing the name of the expression type, its flags and machine mode if any, and then the operands of the expression (separated by spaces).

Expression code names in the `md' file are written in lower case, but when they appear in C code they are written in upper case. In this manual, they are shown as follows: const_int.

In a few contexts a null pointer is valid where an expression is normally wanted. The written form of this is (nil).


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8.2 RTL Classes and Formats

The various expression codes are divided into several classes, which are represented by single characters. You can determine the class of an RTX code with the macro GET_RTX_CLASS (code). Currently, `rtx.def' defines these classes:

o
An RTX code that represents an actual object, such as a register (REG) or a memory location (MEM, SYMBOL_REF). Constants and basic transforms on objects (ADDRESSOF, HIGH, LO_SUM) are also included. Note that SUBREG and STRICT_LOW_PART are not in this class, but in class x.

<
An RTX code for a comparison, such as NE or LT.

1
An RTX code for a unary arithmetic operation, such as NEG, NOT, or ABS. This category also includes value extension (sign or zero) and conversions between integer and floating point.

c
An RTX code for a commutative binary operation, such as PLUS or AND. NE and EQ are comparisons, so they have class <.

2
An RTX code for a non-commutative binary operation, such as MINUS, DIV, or ASHIFTRT.

b
An RTX code for a bit-field operation. Currently only ZERO_EXTRACT and SIGN_EXTRACT. These have three inputs and are lvalues (so they can be used for insertion as well). See section 8.10 Bit-Fields.

3
An RTX code for other three input operations. Currently only IF_THEN_ELSE.

i
An RTX code for an entire instruction: INSN, JUMP_INSN, and CALL_INSN. See section 8.17 Insns.

m
An RTX code for something that matches in insns, such as MATCH_DUP. These only occur in machine descriptions.

a
An RTX code for an auto-increment addressing mode, such as POST_INC.

x
All other RTX codes. This category includes the remaining codes used only in machine descriptions (DEFINE_*, etc.). It also includes all the codes describing side effects (SET, USE, CLOBBER, etc.) and the non-insns that may appear on an insn chain, such as NOTE, BARRIER, and CODE_LABEL.

For each expression code, `rtl.def' specifies the number of contained objects and their kinds using a sequence of characters called the format of the expression code. For example, the format of subreg is `ei'.

These are the most commonly used format characters:

e
An expression (actually a pointer to an expression).

i
An integer.

w
A wide integer.

s
A string.

E
A vector of expressions.

A few other format characters are used occasionally:

u
`u' is equivalent to `e' except that it is printed differently in debugging dumps. It is used for pointers to insns.

n
`n' is equivalent to `i' except that it is printed differently in debugging dumps. It is used for the line number or code number of a note insn.

S
`S' indicates a string which is optional. In the RTL objects in core, `S' is equivalent to `s', but when the object is read, from an `md' file, the string value of this operand may be omitted. An omitted string is taken to be the null string.

V
`V' indicates a vector which is optional. In the RTL objects in core, `V' is equivalent to `E', but when the object is read from an `md' file, the vector value of this operand may be omitted. An omitted vector is effectively the same as a vector of no elements.

0
`0' means a slot whose contents do not fit any normal category. `0' slots are not printed at all in dumps, and are often used in special ways by small parts of the compiler.

There are macros to get the number of operands and the format of an expression code:

GET_RTX_LENGTH (code)
Number of operands of an RTX of code code.

GET_RTX_FORMAT (code)
The format of an RTX of code code, as a C string.

Some classes of RTX codes always have the same format. For example, it is safe to assume that all comparison operations have format ee.

1
All codes of this class have format e.

<
c
2
All codes of these classes have format ee.

b
3
All codes of these classes have format eee.

i
All codes of this class have formats that begin with iuueiee. See section 8.17 Insns. Note that not all RTL objects linked onto an insn chain are of class i.

o
m
x
You can make no assumptions about the format of these codes.


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8.3 Access to Operands

Operands of expressions are accessed using the macros XEXP, XINT, XWINT and XSTR. Each of these macros takes two arguments: an expression-pointer (RTX) and an operand number (counting from zero). Thus,

 
XEXP (x, 2)

accesses operand 2 of expression x, as an expression.

 
XINT (x, 2)

accesses the same operand as an integer. XSTR, used in the same fashion, would access it as a string.

Any operand can be accessed as an integer, as an expression or as a string. You must choose the correct method of access for the kind of value actually stored in the operand. You would do this based on the expression code of the containing expression. That is also how you would know how many operands there are.

For example, if x is a subreg expression, you know that it has two operands which can be correctly accessed as XEXP (x, 0) and XINT (x, 1). If you did XINT (x, 0), you would get the address of the expression operand but cast as an integer; that might occasionally be useful, but it would be cleaner to write (int) XEXP (x, 0). XEXP (x, 1) would also compile without error, and would return the second, integer operand cast as an expression pointer, which would probably result in a crash when accessed. Nothing stops you from writing XEXP (x, 28) either, but this will access memory past the end of the expression with unpredictable results.

Access to operands which are vectors is more complicated. You can use the macro XVEC to get the vector-pointer itself, or the macros XVECEXP and XVECLEN to access the elements and length of a vector.

XVEC (exp, idx)
Access the vector-pointer which is operand number idx in exp.

XVECLEN (exp, idx)
Access the length (number of elements) in the vector which is in operand number idx in exp. This value is an int.

XVECEXP (exp, idx, eltnum)
Access element number eltnum in the vector which is in operand number idx in exp. This value is an RTX.

It is up to you to make sure that eltnum is not negative and is less than XVECLEN (exp, idx).

All the macros defined in this section expand into lvalues and therefore can be used to assign the operands, lengths and vector elements as well as to access them.


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8.4 Flags in an RTL Expression

RTL expressions contain several flags (one-bit bit-fields) that are used in certain types of expression. Most often they are accessed with the following macros, which expand into lvalues:

CONSTANT_POOL_ADDRESS_P (x)
Nonzero in a symbol_ref if it refers to part of the current function's constant pool. For most targets these addresses are in a .rodata section entirely separate from the function, but for some targets the addresses are close to the beginning of the function. In either case GCC assumes these addresses can be addressed directly, perhaps with the help of base registers. Stored in the unchanging field and printed as `/u'.

CONST_OR_PURE_CALL_P (x)
In a call_insn, note, or an expr_list for notes, indicates that the insn represents a call to a const or pure function. Stored in the unchanging field and printed as `/u'.

INSN_ANNULLED_BRANCH_P (x)
In an insn in the delay slot of a branch insn, indicates that an annulling branch should be used. See the discussion under sequence below. Stored in the unchanging field and printed as `/u'.

INSN_DEAD_CODE_P (x)
In an insn during the dead-code elimination pass, nonzero if the insn is dead. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

INSN_DELETED_P (x)
In an insn, nonzero if the insn has been deleted. Stored in the volatil field and printed as `/v'.

INSN_FROM_TARGET_P (x)
In an insn in a delay slot of a branch, indicates that the insn is from the target of the branch. If the branch insn has INSN_ANNULLED_BRANCH_P set, this insn will only be executed if the branch is taken. For annulled branches with INSN_FROM_TARGET_P clear, the insn will be executed only if the branch is not taken. When INSN_ANNULLED_BRANCH_P is not set, this insn will always be executed. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

LABEL_OUTSIDE_LOOP_P (x)
In label_ref expressions, nonzero if this is a reference to a label that is outside the innermost loop containing the reference to the label. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

LABEL_PRESERVE_P (x)
In a code_label, indicates that the label is referenced by code or data not visible to the RTL of a given function. Labels referenced by a non-local goto will have this bit set. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

LABEL_REF_NONLOCAL_P (x)
In label_ref and reg_label expressions, nonzero if this is a reference to a non-local label. Stored in the volatil field and printed as `/v'.

LINK_COST_FREE (x)
In the LOG_LINKS insn_list during scheduling, nonzero when the cost of executing an instruction through the link is zero, i.e., the link makes the cost free. Stored in the call field and printed as `/c'.

LINK_COST_ZERO (x)
In the LOG_LINKS insn_list during scheduling, nonzero when the cost of executing an instruction through the link varies and is unchanged, i.e., the link has zero additional cost. Stored in the jump field and printed as `/j'.

MEM_IN_STRUCT_P (x)
In mem expressions, nonzero for reference to an entire structure, union or array, or to a component of one. Zero for references to a scalar variable or through a pointer to a scalar. If both this flag and MEM_SCALAR_P are clear, then we don't know whether this mem is in a structure or not. Both flags should never be simultaneously set. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

MEM_KEEP_ALIAS_SET_P (x)
In mem expressions, 1 if we should keep the alias set for this mem unchanged when we access a component. Set to 1, for example, when we are already in a non-addressable component of an aggregate. Stored in the jump field and printed as `/j'.

MEM_SCALAR_P (x)
In mem expressions, nonzero for reference to a scalar known not to be a member of a structure, union, or array. Zero for such references and for indirections through pointers, even pointers pointing to scalar types. If both this flag and MEM_IN_STRUCT_P are clear, then we don't know whether this mem is in a structure or not. Both flags should never be simultaneously set. Stored in the frame_related field and printed as `/f'.

MEM_VOLATILE_P (x)
In mem and asm_operands expressions, nonzero for volatile memory references. Stored in the volatil field and printed as `/v'.

REG_FUNCTION_VALUE_P (x)
Nonzero in a reg if it is the place in which this function's value is going to be returned. (This happens only in a hard register.) Stored in the integrated field and printed as `/i'.

REG_LOOP_TEST_P (x)
In reg expressions, nonzero if this register's entire life is contained in the exit test code for some loop. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

REG_POINTER (x)
Nonzero in a reg if the register holds a pointer. Stored in the frame_related field and printed as `/f'.

REG_USERVAR_P (x)
In a reg, nonzero if it corresponds to a variable present in the user's source code. Zero for temporaries generated internally by the compiler. Stored in the volatil field and printed as `/v'.

The same hard register may be used also for collecting the values of functions called by this one, but REG_FUNCTION_VALUE_P is zero in this kind of use.

RTX_FRAME_RELATED_P (x)
Nonzero in an insn or set which is part of a function prologue and sets the stack pointer, sets the frame pointer, or saves a register. This flag should also be set on an instruction that sets up a temporary register to use in place of the frame pointer. Stored in the frame_related field and printed as `/f'.

In particular, on RISC targets where there are limits on the sizes of immediate constants, it is sometimes impossible to reach the register save area directly from the stack pointer. In that case, a temporary register is used that is near enough to the register save area, and the Canonical Frame Address, i.e., DWARF2's logical frame pointer, register must (temporarily) be changed to be this temporary register. So, the instruction that sets this temporary register must be marked as RTX_FRAME_RELATED_P.

If the marked instruction is overly complex (defined in terms of what dwarf2out_frame_debug_expr can handle), you will also have to create a REG_FRAME_RELATED_EXPR note and attach it to the instruction. This note should contain a simple expression of the computation performed by this instruction, i.e., one that dwarf2out_frame_debug_expr can handle.

This flag is required for exception handling support on targets with RTL prologues.

RTX_INTEGRATED_P (x)
Nonzero in an insn, insn_list, or const if it resulted from an in-line function call. Stored in the integrated field and printed as `/i'.

RTX_UNCHANGING_P (x)
Nonzero in a reg or mem if the memory is set at most once, anywhere. This does not mean that it is function invariant. Stored in the unchanging field and printed as `/u'.

SCHED_GROUP_P (x)
During instruction scheduling, in an insn, indicates that the previous insn must be scheduled together with this insn. This is used to ensure that certain groups of instructions will not be split up by the instruction scheduling pass, for example, use insns before a call_insn may not be separated from the call_insn. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

SET_IS_RETURN_P (x)
For a set, nonzero if it is for a return. Stored in the jump field and printed as `/j'.

SIBLING_CALL_P (x)
For a call_insn, nonzero if the insn is a sibling call. Stored in the jump field and printed as `/j'.

STRING_POOL_ADDRESS_P (x)
For a symbol_ref expression, nonzero if it addresses this function's string constant pool. Stored in the frame_related field and printed as `/f'.

SUBREG_PROMOTED_UNSIGNED_P (x)
Nonzero in a subreg that has SUBREG_PROMOTED_VAR_P nonzero if the object being referenced is kept zero-extended and zero if it is kept sign-extended. Stored in the unchanging field and printed as `/u'.

SUBREG_PROMOTED_VAR_P (x)
Nonzero in a subreg if it was made when accessing an object that was promoted to a wider mode in accord with the PROMOTED_MODE machine description macro (see section 10.5 Storage Layout). In this case, the mode of the subreg is the declared mode of the object and the mode of SUBREG_REG is the mode of the register that holds the object. Promoted variables are always either sign- or zero-extended to the wider mode on every assignment. Stored in the in_struct field and printed as `/s'.

SYMBOL_REF_FLAG (x)
In a symbol_ref, this is used as a flag for machine-specific purposes. Stored in the volatil field and printed as `/v'.

SYMBOL_REF_USED (x)
In a symbol_ref, indicates that x has been used. This is normally only used to ensure that x is only declared external once. Stored in the used field.

SYMBOL_REF_WEAK (x)
In a symbol_ref, indicates that x has been declared weak. Stored in the integrated field and printed as `/i'.

These are the fields to which the above macros refer:

call
In the LOG_LINKS of an insn_list during scheduling, 1 means that the cost of executing an instruction through the link is zero.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/c'.

frame_related
In an insn or set expression, 1 means that it is part of a function prologue and sets the stack pointer, sets the frame pointer, saves a register, or sets up a temporary register to use in place of the frame pointer.

In reg expressions, 1 means that the register holds a pointer.

In symbol_ref expressions, 1 means that the reference addresses this function's string constant pool.

In mem expressions, 1 means that the reference is to a scalar.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/f'.

in_struct
In mem expressions, it is 1 if the memory datum referred to is all or part of a structure or array; 0 if it is (or might be) a scalar variable. A reference through a C pointer has 0 because the pointer might point to a scalar variable. This information allows the compiler to determine something about possible cases of aliasing.

In reg expressions, it is 1 if the register has its entire life contained within the test expression of some loop.

In subreg expressions, 1 means that the subreg is accessing an object that has had its mode promoted from a wider mode.

In label_ref expressions, 1 means that the referenced label is outside the innermost loop containing the insn in which the label_ref was found.

In code_label expressions, it is 1 if the label may never be deleted. This is used for labels which are the target of non-local gotos. Such a label that would have been deleted is replaced with a note of type NOTE_INSN_DELETED_LABEL.

In an insn during dead-code elimination, 1 means that the insn is dead code.

In an insn during reorg for an insn in the delay slot of a branch, 1 means that this insn is from the target of the branch.

In an insn during instruction scheduling, 1 means that this insn must be scheduled as part of a group together with the previous insn.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/s'.

integrated
In an insn, insn_list, or const, 1 means the RTL was produced by procedure integration.

In reg expressions, 1 means the register contains the value to be returned by the current function. On machines that pass parameters in registers, the same register number may be used for parameters as well, but this flag is not set on such uses.

In symbol_ref expressions, 1 means the referenced symbol is weak.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/i'.

jump
In a mem expression, 1 means we should keep the alias set for this mem unchanged when we access a component.

In a set, 1 means it is for a return.

In a call_insn, 1 means it is a sibling call.

In the LOG_LINKS of an insn_list during scheduling, 1 means the cost of executing an instruction through the link varies and is unchanging.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/j'.

unchanging
In reg and mem expressions, 1 means that the value of the expression never changes.

In subreg expressions, it is 1 if the subreg references an unsigned object whose mode has been promoted to a wider mode.

In an insn, 1 means that this is an annulling branch.

In a symbol_ref expression, 1 means that this symbol addresses something in the per-function constant pool.

In a call_insn, note, or an expr_list of notes, 1 means that this instruction is a call to a const or pure function.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/u'.

used
This flag is used directly (without an access macro) at the end of RTL generation for a function, to count the number of times an expression appears in insns. Expressions that appear more than once are copied, according to the rules for shared structure (see section 8.19 Structure Sharing Assumptions).

For a reg, it is used directly (without an access macro) by the leaf register renumbering code to ensure that each register is only renumbered once.

In a symbol_ref, it indicates that an external declaration for the symbol has already been written.

volatil
In a mem or asm_operands expression, it is 1 if the memory reference is volatile. Volatile memory references may not be deleted, reordered or combined.

In a symbol_ref expression, it is used for machine-specific purposes.

In a reg expression, it is 1 if the value is a user-level variable. 0 indicates an internal compiler temporary.

In an insn, 1 means the insn has been deleted.

In label_ref and reg_label expressions, 1 means a reference to a non-local label.

In an RTL dump, this flag is represented as `/v'.


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8.5 Machine Modes

A machine mode describes a size of data object and the representation used for it. In the C code, machine modes are represented by an enumeration type, enum machine_mode, defined in `machmode.def'. Each RTL expression has room for a machine mode and so do certain kinds of tree expressions (declarations and types, to be precise).

In debugging dumps and machine descriptions, the machine mode of an RTL expression is written after the expression code with a colon to separate them. The letters `mode' which appear at the end of each machine mode name are omitted. For example, (reg:SI 38) is a reg expression with machine mode SImode. If the mode is VOIDmode, it is not written at all.

Here is a table of machine modes. The term "byte" below refers to an object of BITS_PER_UNIT bits (see section 10.5 Storage Layout).

BImode
"Bit" mode represents a single bit, for predicate registers.

QImode
"Quarter-Integer" mode represents a single byte treated as an integer.

HImode
"Half-Integer" mode represents a two-byte integer.

PSImode
"Partial Single Integer" mode represents an integer which occupies four bytes but which doesn't really use all four. On some machines, this is the right mode to use for pointers.

SImode
"Single Integer" mode represents a four-byte integer.

PDImode
"Partial Double Integer" mode represents an integer which occupies eight bytes but which doesn't really use all eight. On some machines, this is the right mode to use for certain pointers.

DImode
"Double Integer" mode represents an eight-byte integer.

TImode
"Tetra Integer" (?) mode represents a sixteen-byte integer.

OImode
"Octa Integer" (?) mode represents a thirty-two-byte integer.

QFmode
"Quarter-Floating" mode represents a quarter-precision (single byte) floating point number.

HFmode
"Half-Floating" mode represents a half-precision (two byte) floating point number.

TQFmode
"Three-Quarter-Floating" (?) mode represents a three-quarter-precision (three byte) floating point number.

SFmode
"Single Floating" mode represents a four byte floating point number. In the common case, of a processor with IEEE arithmetic and 8-bit bytes, this is a single-precision IEEE floating point number; it can also be used for double-precision (on processors with 16-bit bytes) and single-precision VAX and IBM types.

DFmode
"Double Floating" mode represents an eight byte floating point number. In the common case, of a processor with IEEE arithmetic and 8-bit bytes, this is a double-precision IEEE floating point number.

XFmode
"Extended Floating" mode represents a twelve byte floating point number. This mode is used for IEEE extended floating point. On some systems not all bits within these bytes will actually be used.

TFmode
"Tetra Floating" mode represents a sixteen byte floating point number. This gets used for both the 96-bit extended IEEE floating-point types padded to 128 bits, and true 128-bit extended IEEE floating-point types.

CCmode
"Condition Code" mode represents the value of a condition code, which is a machine-specific set of bits used to represent the result of a comparison operation. Other machine-specific modes may also be used for the condition code. These modes are not used on machines that use cc0 (see see section 10.15 Condition Code Status).

BLKmode
"Block" mode represents values that are aggregates to which none of the other modes apply. In RTL, only memory references can have this mode, and only if they appear in string-move or vector instructions. On machines which have no such instructions, BLKmode will not appear in RTL.

VOIDmode
Void mode means the absence of a mode or an unspecified mode. For example, RTL expressions of code const_int have mode VOIDmode because they can be taken to have whatever mode the context requires. In debugging dumps of RTL, VOIDmode is expressed by the absence of any mode.

QCmode, HCmode, SCmode, DCmode, XCmode, TCmode
These modes stand for a complex number represented as a pair of floating point values. The floating point values are in QFmode, HFmode, SFmode, DFmode, XFmode, and TFmode, respectively.

CQImode, CHImode, CSImode, CDImode, CTImode, COImode
These modes stand for a complex number represented as a pair of integer values. The integer values are in QImode, HImode, SImode, DImode, TImode, and OImode, respectively.

The machine description defines Pmode as a C macro which expands into the machine mode used for addresses. Normally this is the mode whose size is BITS_PER_WORD, SImode on 32-bit machines.

The only modes which a machine description must support are QImode, and the modes corresponding to BITS_PER_WORD, FLOAT_TYPE_SIZE and DOUBLE_TYPE_SIZE. The compiler will attempt to use DImode for 8-byte structures and unions, but this can be prevented by overriding the definition of MAX_FIXED_MODE_SIZE. Alternatively, you can have the compiler use TImode for 16-byte structures and unions. Likewise, you can arrange for the C type short int to avoid using HImode.

Very few explicit references to machine modes remain in the compiler and these few references will soon be removed. Instead, the machine modes are divided into mode classes. These are represented by the enumeration type enum mode_class defined in `machmode.h'. The possible mode classes are:

MODE_INT
Integer modes. By default these are BImode, QImode, HImode, SImode, DImode, TImode, and OImode.

MODE_PARTIAL_INT
The "partial integer" modes, PQImode, PHImode, PSImode and PDImode.

MODE_FLOAT
Floating point modes. By default these are QFmode, HFmode, TQFmode, SFmode, DFmode, XFmode and TFmode.

MODE_COMPLEX_INT
Complex integer modes. (These are not currently implemented).

MODE_COMPLEX_FLOAT
Complex floating point modes. By default these are QCmode, HCmode, SCmode, DCmode, XCmode, and TCmode.

MODE_FUNCTION
Algol or Pascal function variables including a static chain. (These are not currently implemented).

MODE_CC
Modes representing condition code values. These are CCmode plus any modes listed in the EXTRA_CC_MODES macro. See section 9.11 Defining Jump Instruction Patterns, also see 10.15 Condition Code Status.

MODE_RANDOM
This is a catchall mode class for modes which don't fit into the above classes. Currently VOIDmode and BLKmode are in MODE_RANDOM.

Here are some C macros that relate to machine modes:

GET_MODE (x)
Returns the machine mode of the RTX x.

PUT_MODE (x, newmode)
Alters the machine mode of the RTX x to be newmode.

NUM_MACHINE_MODES
Stands for the number of machine modes available on the target machine. This is one greater than the largest numeric value of any machine mode.

GET_MODE_NAME (m)
Returns the name of mode m as a string.

GET_MODE_CLASS (m)
Returns the mode class of mode m.

GET_MODE_WIDER_MODE (m)
Returns the next wider natural mode. For example, the expression GET_MODE_WIDER_MODE (QImode) returns HImode.

GET_MODE_SIZE (m)
Returns the size in bytes of a datum of mode m.

GET_MODE_BITSIZE (m)
Returns the size in bits of a datum of mode m.

GET_MODE_MASK (m)
Returns a bitmask containing 1 for all bits in a word that fit within mode m. This macro can only be used for modes whose bitsize is less than or equal to HOST_BITS_PER_INT.

GET_MODE_ALIGNMENT (m)
Return the required alignment, in bits, for an object of mode m.

GET_MODE_UNIT_SIZE (m)
Returns the size in bytes of the subunits of a datum of mode m. This is the same as GET_MODE_SIZE except in the case of complex modes. For them, the unit size is the size of the real or imaginary part.

GET_MODE_NUNITS (m)
Returns the number of units contained in a mode, i.e., GET_MODE_SIZE divided by GET_MODE_UNIT_SIZE.

GET_CLASS_NARROWEST_MODE (c)
Returns the narrowest mode in mode class c.

The global variables byte_mode and word_mode contain modes whose classes are MODE_INT and whose bitsizes are either BITS_PER_UNIT or BITS_PER_WORD, respectively. On 32-bit machines, these are QImode and SImode, respectively.


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8.6 Constant Expression Types

The simplest RTL expressions are those that represent constant values.

(const_int i)
This type of expression represents the integer value i. i is customarily accessed with the macro INTVAL as in INTVAL (exp), which is equivalent to XWINT (exp, 0).

There is only one expression object for the integer value zero; it is the value of the variable const0_rtx. Likewise, the only expression for integer value one is found in const1_rtx, the only expression for integer value two is found in const2_rtx, and the only expression for integer value negative one is found in constm1_rtx. Any attempt to create an expression of code const_int and value zero, one, two or negative one will return const0_rtx, const1_rtx, const2_rtx or constm1_rtx as appropriate.

Similarly, there is only one object for the integer whose value is STORE_FLAG_VALUE. It is found in const_true_rtx. If STORE_FLAG_VALUE is one, const_true_rtx and const1_rtx will point to the same object. If STORE_FLAG_VALUE is -1, const_true_rtx and constm1_rtx will point to the same object.

(const_double:m addr i0 i1 ...)
Represents either a floating-point constant of mode m or an integer constant too large to fit into HOST_BITS_PER_WIDE_INT bits but small enough to fit within twice that number of bits (GCC does not provide a mechanism to represent even larger constants). In the latter case, m will be VOIDmode.

(const_vector:m [x0 x1 ...])
Represents a vector constant. The square brackets stand for the vector containing the constant elements. x0, x1 and so on are the const_int or const_double elements.

The number of units in a const_vector is obtained with the macro CONST_VECTOR_NUNITS as in CONST_VECTOR_NUNITS (v).

Individual elements in a vector constant are accessed with the macro CONST_VECTOR_ELT as in CONST_VECTOR_ELT (v, n) where v is the vector constant and n is the element desired.

addr is used to contain the mem expression that corresponds to the location in memory that at which the constant can be found. If it has not been allocated a memory location, but is on the chain of all const_double expressions in this compilation (maintained using an undisplayed field), addr contains const0_rtx. If it is not on the chain, addr contains cc0_rtx. addr is customarily accessed with the macro CONST_DOUBLE_MEM and the chain field via CONST_DOUBLE_CHAIN.

If m is VOIDmode, the bits of the value are stored in i0 and i1. i0 is customarily accessed with the macro CONST_DOUBLE_LOW and i1 with CONST_DOUBLE_HIGH.

If the constant is floating point (regardless of its precision), then the number of integers used to store the value depends on the size of REAL_VALUE_TYPE (see section 10.22 Cross Compilation and Floating Point). The integers represent a floating point number, but not precisely in the target machine's or host machine's floating point format. To convert them to the precise bit pattern used by the target machine, use the macro REAL_VALUE_TO_TARGET_DOUBLE and friends (see section 10.20.2 Output of Data).

The macro CONST0_RTX (mode) refers to an expression with value 0 in mode mode. If mode mode is of mode class MODE_INT, it returns const0_rtx. If mode mode is of mode class MODE_FLOAT, it returns a CONST_DOUBLE expression in mode mode. Otherwise, it returns a CONST_VECTOR expression in mode mode. Similarly, the macro CONST1_RTX (mode) refers to an expression with value 1 in mode mode and similarly for CONST2_RTX. The CONST1_RTX and CONST2_RTX macros are undefined for vector modes.

(const_string str)
Represents a constant string with value str. Currently this is used only for insn attributes (see section 9.18 Instruction Attributes) since constant strings in C are placed in memory.

(symbol_ref:mode symbol)
Represents the value of an assembler label for data. symbol is a string that describes the name of the assembler label. If it starts with a `*', the label is the rest of symbol not including the `*'. Otherwise, the label is symbol, usually prefixed with `_'.

The symbol_ref contains a mode, which is usually Pmode. Usually that is the only mode for which a symbol is directly valid.

(label_ref label)
Represents the value of an assembler label for code. It contains one operand, an expression, which must be a code_label or a note of type NOTE_INSN_DELETED_LABEL that appears in the instruction sequence to identify the place where the label should go.

The reason for using a distinct expression type for code label references is so that jump optimization can distinguish them.

(const:m exp)
Represents a constant that is the result of an assembly-time arithmetic computation. The operand, exp, is an expression that contains only constants (const_int, symbol_ref and label_ref expressions) combined with plus and minus. However, not all combinations are valid, since the assembler cannot do arbitrary arithmetic on relocatable symbols.

m should be Pmode.

(high:m exp)
Represents the high-order bits of exp, usually a symbol_ref. The number of bits is machine-dependent and is normally the number of bits specified in an instruction that initializes the high order bits of a register. It is used with lo_sum to represent the typical two-instruction sequence used in RISC machines to reference a global memory location.

m should be Pmode.


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8.7 Registers and Memory

Here are the RTL expression types for describing access to machine registers and to main memory.

(reg:m n)
For small values of the integer n (those that are less than FIRST_PSEUDO_REGISTER), this stands for a reference to machine register number n: a hard register. For larger values of n, it stands for a temporary value or pseudo register. The compiler's strategy is to generate code assuming an unlimited number of such pseudo registers, and later convert them into hard registers or into memory references.

m is the machine mode of the reference. It is necessary because machines can generally refer to each register in more than one mode. For example, a register may contain a full word but there may be instructions to refer to it as a half word or as a single byte, as well as instructions to refer to it as a floating point number of various precisions.

Even for a register that the machine can access in only one mode, the mode must always be specified.

The symbol FIRST_PSEUDO_REGISTER is defined by the machine description, since the number of hard registers on the machine is an invariant characteristic of the machine. Note, however, that not all of the machine registers must be general registers. All the machine registers that can be used for storage of data are given hard register numbers, even those that can be used only in certain instructions or can hold only certain types of data.

A hard register may be accessed in various modes throughout one function, but each pseudo register is given a natural mode and is accessed only in that mode. When it is necessary to describe an access to a pseudo register using a nonnatural mode, a subreg expression is used.

A reg expression with a machine mode that specifies more than one word of data may actually stand for several consecutive registers. If in addition the register number specifies a hardware register, then it actually represents several consecutive hardware registers starting with the specified one.

Each pseudo register number used in a function's RTL code is represented by a unique reg expression.

Some pseudo register numbers, those within the range of FIRST_VIRTUAL_REGISTER to LAST_VIRTUAL_REGISTER only appear during the RTL generation phase and are eliminated before the optimization phases. These represent locations in the stack frame that cannot be determined until RTL generation for the function has been completed. The following virtual register numbers are defined:

VIRTUAL_INCOMING_ARGS_REGNUM
This points to the first word of the incoming arguments passed on the stack. Normally these arguments are placed there by the caller, but the callee may have pushed some arguments that were previously passed in registers.

When RTL generation is complete, this virtual register is replaced by the sum of the register given by ARG_POINTER_REGNUM and the value of FIRST_PARM_OFFSET.

VIRTUAL_STACK_VARS_REGNUM
If FRAME_GROWS_DOWNWARD is defined, this points to immediately above the first variable on the stack. Otherwise, it points to the first variable on the stack.

VIRTUAL_STACK_VARS_REGNUM is replaced with the sum of the register given by FRAME_POINTER_REGNUM and the value STARTING_FRAME_OFFSET.

VIRTUAL_STACK_DYNAMIC_REGNUM
This points to the location of dynamically allocated memory on the stack immediately after the stack pointer has been adjusted by the amount of memory desired.

This virtual register is replaced by the sum of the register given by STACK_POINTER_REGNUM and the value STACK_DYNAMIC_OFFSET.

VIRTUAL_OUTGOING_ARGS_REGNUM
This points to the location in the stack at which outgoing arguments should be written when the stack is pre-pushed (arguments pushed using push insns should always use STACK_POINTER_REGNUM).

This virtual register is replaced by the sum of the register given by STACK_POINTER_REGNUM and the value STACK_POINTER_OFFSET.

(subreg:m reg bytenum)
subreg expressions are used to refer to a register in a machine mode other than its natural one, or to refer to one register of a multi-part reg that actually refers to several registers.

Each pseudo-register has a natural mode. If it is necessary to operate on it in a different mode--for example, to perform a fullword move instruction on a pseudo-register that contains a single byte--the pseudo-register must be enclosed in a subreg. In such a case, bytenum is zero.

Usually m is at least as narrow as the mode of reg, in which case it is restricting consideration to only the bits of reg that are in m.

Sometimes m is wider than the mode of reg. These subreg expressions are often called paradoxical. They are used in cases where we want to refer to an object in a wider mode but do not care what value the additional bits have. The reload pass ensures that paradoxical references are only made to hard registers.

The other use of subreg is to extract the individual registers of a multi-register value. Machine modes such as DImode and TImode can indicate values longer than a word, values which usually require two or more consecutive registers. To access one of the registers, use a subreg with mode SImode and a bytenum offset that says which register.

Storing in a non-paradoxical subreg has undefined results for bits belonging to the same word as the subreg. This laxity makes it easier to generate efficient code for such instructions. To represent an instruction that preserves all the bits outside of those in the subreg, use strict_low_part around the subreg.

The compilation parameter WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN, if set to 1, says that byte number zero is part of the most significant word; otherwise, it is part of the least significant word.

The compilation parameter BYTES_BIG_ENDIAN, if set to 1, says that byte number zero is the most significant byte within a word; otherwise, it is the least significant byte within a word.

On a few targets, FLOAT_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN disagrees with WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN. However, most parts of the compiler treat floating point values as if they had the same endianness as integer values. This works because they handle them solely as a collection of integer values, with no particular numerical value. Only real.c and the runtime libraries care about FLOAT_WORDS_BIG_ENDIAN.

Between the combiner pass and the reload pass, it is possible to have a paradoxical subreg which contains a mem instead of a reg as its first operand. After the reload pass, it is also possible to have a non-paradoxical subreg which contains a mem; this usually occurs when the mem is a stack slot which replaced a pseudo register.

Note that it is not valid to access a DFmode value in SFmode using a subreg. On some machines the most significant part of a DFmode value does not have the same format as a single-precision floating value.

It is also not valid to access a single word of a multi-word value in a hard register when less registers can hold the value than would be expected from its size. For example, some 32-bit machines have floating-point registers that can hold an entire DFmode value. If register 10 were such a register (subreg:SI (reg:DF 10) 1) would be invalid because there is no way to convert that reference to a single machine register. The reload pass prevents subreg expressions such as these from being formed.

The first operand of a subreg expression is customarily accessed with the SUBREG_REG macro and the second operand is customarily accessed with the SUBREG_BYTE macro.

(scratch:m)
This represents a scratch register that will be required for the execution of a single instruction and not used subsequently. It is converted into a reg by either the local register allocator or the reload pass.

scratch is usually present inside a clobber operation (see section 8.14 Side Effect Expressions).

(cc0)
This refers to the machine's condition code register. It has no operands and may not have a machine mode. There are two ways to use it:

There is only one expression object of code cc0; it is the value of the variable cc0_rtx. Any attempt to create an expression of code cc0 will return cc0_rtx.

Instructions can set the condition code implicitly. On many machines, nearly all instructions set the condition code based on the value that they compute or store. It is not necessary to record these actions explicitly in the RTL because the machine description includes a prescription for recognizing the instructions that do so (by means of the macro NOTICE_UPDATE_CC). See section 10.15 Condition Code Status. Only instructions whose sole purpose is to set the condition code, and instructions that use the condition code, need mention (cc0).

On some machines, the condition code register is given a register number and a reg is used instead of (cc0). This is usually the preferable approach if only a small subset of instructions modify the condition code. Other machines store condition codes in general registers; in such cases a pseudo register should be used.

Some machines, such as the Sparc and RS/6000, have two sets of arithmetic instructions, one that sets and one that does not set the condition code. This is best handled by normally generating the instruction that does not set the condition code, and making a pattern that both performs the arithmetic and sets the condition code register (which would not be (cc0) in this case). For examples, search for `addcc' and `andcc' in `sparc.md'.

(pc)
This represents the machine's program counter. It has no operands and may not have a machine mode. (pc) may be validly used only in certain specific contexts in jump instructions.

There is only one expression object of code pc; it is the value of the variable pc_rtx. Any attempt to create an expression of code pc will return pc_rtx.

All instructions that do not jump alter the program counter implicitly by incrementing it, but there is no need to mention this in the RTL.

(mem:m addr alias)
This RTX represents a reference to main memory at an address represented by the expression addr. m specifies how large a unit of memory is accessed. alias specifies an alias set for the reference. In general two items are in different alias sets if they cannot reference the same memory address.

(addressof:m reg)
This RTX represents a request for the address of register reg. Its mode is always Pmode. If there are any addressof expressions left in the function after CSE, reg is forced into the stack and the addressof expression is replaced with a plus expression for the address of its stack slot.


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8.8 RTL Expressions for Arithmetic

Unless otherwise specified, all the operands of arithmetic expressions must be valid for mode m. An operand is valid for mode m if it has mode m, or if it is a const_int or const_double and m is a mode of class MODE_INT.

For commutative binary operations, constants should be placed in the second operand.

(plus:m x y)
Represents the sum of the values represented by x and y carried out in machine mode m.

(lo_sum:m x y)
Like plus, except that it represents that sum of x and the low-order bits of y. The number of low order bits is machine-dependent but is normally the number of bits in a Pmode item minus the number of bits set by the high code (see section 8.6 Constant Expression Types).

m should be Pmode.

(minus:m x y)
Like plus but represents subtraction.

(ss_plus:m x y)

Like plus, but using signed saturation in case of an overflow.

(us_plus:m x y)

Like plus, but using unsigned saturation in case of an overflow.

(ss_minus:m x y)

Like minus, but using signed saturation in case of an overflow.

(us_minus:m x y)

Like minus, but using unsigned saturation in case of an overflow.

(compare:m x y)
Represents the result of subtracting y from x for purposes of comparison. The result is computed without overflow, as if with infinite precision.

Of course, machines can't really subtract with infinite precision. However, they can pretend to do so when only the sign of the result will be used, which is the case when the result is stored in the condition code. And that is the only way this kind of expression may validly be used: as a value to be stored in the condition codes, either (cc0) or a register. See section 8.9 Comparison Operations.

The mode m is not related to the modes of x and y, but instead is the mode of the condition code value. If (cc0) is used, it is VOIDmode. Otherwise it is some mode in class MODE_CC, often CCmode. See section 10.15 Condition Code Status. If m is VOIDmode or CCmode, the operation returns sufficient information (in an unspecified format) so that any comparison operator can be applied to the result of the COMPARE operation. For other modes in class MODE_CC, the operation only returns a subset of this information.

Normally, x and y must have the same mode. Otherwise, compare is valid only if the mode of x is in class MODE_INT and y is a const_int or const_double with mode VOIDmode. The mode of x determines what mode the comparison is to be done in; thus it must not be VOIDmode.

If one of the operands is a constant, it should be placed in the second operand and the comparison code adjusted as appropriate.

A compare specifying two VOIDmode constants is not valid since there is no way to know in what mode the comparison is to be performed; the comparison must either be folded during the compilation or the first operand must be loaded into a register while its mode is still known.

(neg:m x)
Represents the negation (subtraction from zero) of the value represented by x, carried out in mode m.

(mult:m x y)
Represents the signed product of the values represented by x and y carried out in machine mode m.

Some machines support a multiplication that generates a product wider than the operands. Write the pattern for this as

 
(mult:m (sign_extend:m x) (sign_extend:m y))

where m is wider than the modes of x and y, which need not be the same.

For unsigned widening multiplication, use the same idiom, but with zero_extend instead of sign_extend.

(div:m x y)
Represents the quotient in signed division of x by y, carried out in machine mode m. If m is a floating point mode, it represents the exact quotient; otherwise, the integerized quotient.

Some machines have division instructions in which the operands and quotient widths are not all the same; you should represent such instructions using truncate and sign_extend as in,

 
(truncate:m1 (div:m2 x (sign_extend:m2 y)))

(udiv:m x y)
Like div but represents unsigned division.

(mod:m x y)
(umod:m x y)
Like div and udiv but represent the remainder instead of the quotient.

(smin:m x y)
(smax:m x y)
Represents the smaller (for smin) or larger (for smax) of x and y, interpreted as signed integers in mode m.

(umin:m x y)
(umax:m x y)
Like smin and smax, but the values are interpreted as unsigned integers.

(not:m x)
Represents the bitwise complement of the value represented by x, carried out in mode m, which must be a fixed-point machine mode.

(and:m x y)
Represents the bitwise logical-and of the values represented by x and y, carried out in machine mode m, which must be a fixed-point machine mode.

(ior:m x y)
Represents the bitwise inclusive-or of the values represented by x and y, carried out in machine mode m, which must be a fixed-point mode.

(xor:m x y)
Represents the bitwise exclusive-or of the values represented by x and y, carried out in machine mode m, which must be a fixed-point mode.

(ashift:m x c)
Represents the result of arithmetically shifting x left by c places. x have mode m, a fixed-point machine mode. c be a fixed-point mode or be a constant with mode VOIDmode; which mode is determined by the mode called for in the machine description entry for the left-shift instruction. For example, on the VAX, the mode of c is QImode regardless of m.

(lshiftrt:m x c)
(ashiftrt:m x c)
Like ashift but for right shift. Unlike the case for left shift, these two operations are distinct.

(rotate:m x c)
(rotatert:m x c)
Similar but represent left and right rotate. If c is a constant, use rotate.

(abs:m x)
Represents the absolute value of x, computed in mode m.

(sqrt:m x)
Represents the square root of x, computed in mode m. Most often m will be a floating point mode.

(ffs:m x)
Represents one plus the index of the least significant 1-bit in x, represented as an integer of mode m. (The value is zero if x is zero.) The mode of x need not be m; depending on the target machine, various mode combinations may be valid.


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8.9 Comparison Operations

Comparison operators test a relation on two operands and are considered to represent a machine-dependent nonzero value described by, but not necessarily equal to, STORE_FLAG_VALUE (see section 10.25 Miscellaneous Parameters) if the relation holds, or zero if it does not. The mode of the comparison operation is independent of the mode of the data being compared. If the comparison operation is being tested (e.g., the first operand of an if_then_else), the mode must be VOIDmode. If the comparison operation is producing data to be stored in some variable, the mode must be in class MODE_INT. All comparison operations producing data must use the same mode, which is machine-specific.

There are two ways that comparison operations may be used. The comparison operators may be used to compare the condition codes (cc0) against zero, as in (eq (cc0) (const_int 0)). Such a construct actually refers to the result of the preceding instruction in which the condition codes were set. The instruction setting the condition code must be adjacent to the instruction using the condition code; only note insns may separate them.

Alternatively, a comparison operation may directly compare two data objects. The mode of the comparison is determined by the operands; they must both be valid for a common machine mode. A comparison with both operands constant would be invalid as the machine mode could not be deduced from it, but such a comparison should never exist in RTL due to constant folding.

In the example above, if (cc0) were last set to (compare x y), the comparison operation is identical to (eq x y). Usually only one style of comparisons is supported on a particular machine, but the combine pass will try to merge the operations to produce the eq shown in case it exists in the context of the particular insn involved.

Inequality comparisons come in two flavors, signed and unsigned. Thus, there are distinct expression codes gt and gtu for signed and unsigned greater-than. These can produce different results for the same pair of integer values: for example, 1 is signed greater-than -1 but not unsigned greater-than, because -1 when regarded as unsigned is actually 0xffffffff which is greater than 1.

The signed comparisons are also used for floating point values. Floating point comparisons are distinguished by the machine modes of the operands.

(eq:m x y)
STORE_FLAG_VALUE if the values represented by x and y are equal, otherwise 0.

(ne:m x y)
STORE_FLAG_VALUE if the values represented by x and y are not equal, otherwise 0.

(gt:m x y)
STORE_FLAG_VALUE if the x is greater than y. If they are fixed-point, the comparison is done in a signed sense.

(gtu:m x y)
Like gt but does unsigned comparison, on fixed-point numbers only.

(lt:m x y)
(ltu:m x y)
Like gt and gtu but test for "less than".

(ge:m x y)
(geu:m x y)
Like gt and gtu but test for "greater than or equal".

(le:m x y)
(leu:m x y)
Like gt and gtu but test for "less than or equal".

(if_then_else cond then else)
This is not a comparison operation but is listed here because it is always used in conjunction with a comparison operation. To be precise, cond is a comparison expression. This expression represents a choice, according to cond, between the value represented by then and the one represented by else.

On most machines, if_then_else expressions are valid only to express conditional jumps.

(cond [test1 value1 test2 value2 ...] default)
Similar to if_then_else, but more general. Each of test1, test2, ... is performed in turn. The result of this expression is the value corresponding to the first nonzero test, or default if none of the tests are nonzero expressions.

This is currently not valid for instruction patterns and is supported only for insn attributes. See section 9.18 Instruction Attributes.


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8.10 Bit-Fields

Special expression codes exist to represent bit-field instructions. These types of expressions are lvalues in RTL; they may appear on the left side of an assignment, indicating insertion of a value into the specified bit-field.

(sign_extract:m loc size pos)
This represents a reference to a sign-extended bit-field contained or starting in loc (a memory or register reference). The bit-field is size bits wide and starts at bit pos. The compilation option BITS_BIG_ENDIAN says which end of the memory unit pos counts from.

If loc is in memory, its mode must be a single-byte integer mode. If loc is in a register, the mode to use is specified by the operand of the insv or extv pattern (see section 9.8 Standard Pattern Names For Generation) and is usually a full-word integer mode, which is the default if none is specified.

The mode of pos is machine-specific and is also specified in the insv or extv pattern.

The mode m is the same as the mode that would be used for loc if it were a register.

(zero_extract:m loc size pos)
Like sign_extract but refers to an unsigned or zero-extended bit-field. The same sequence of bits are extracted, but they are filled to an entire word with zeros instead of by sign-extension.


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8.11 Vector Operations

All normal RTL expressions can be used with vector modes; they are interpreted as operating on each part of the vector independently. Additionally, there are a few new expressions to describe specific vector operations.

(vec_merge:m vec1 vec2 items)
This describes a merge operation between two vectors. The result is a vector of mode m; its elements are selected from either vec1 or vec2. Which elements are selected is described by items, which is a bit mask represented by a const_int; a zero bit indicates the corresponding element in the result vector is taken from vec2 while a set bit indicates it is taken from vec1.

(vec_select:m vec1 selection)
This describes an operation that selects parts of a vector. vec1 is the source vector, selection is a parallel that contains a const_int for each of the subparts of the result vector, giving the number of the source subpart that should be stored into it.

(vec_concat:m vec1 vec2)
Describes a vector concat operation. The result is a concatenation of the vectors vec1 and vec2; its length is the sum of the lengths of the two inputs.

(vec_const:m subparts)
This describes a constant vector. subparts is a parallel that contains a constant for each of the subparts of the vector.

(vec_duplicate:m vec)
This operation converts a small vector into a larger one by duplicating the input values. The output vector mode must have the same submodes as the input vector mode, and the number of output parts must be an integer multiple of the number of input parts.


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8.12 Conversions

All conversions between machine modes must be represented by explicit conversion operations. For example, an expression which is the sum of a byte and a full word cannot be written as (plus:SI (reg:QI 34) (reg:SI 80)) because the plus operation requires two operands of the same machine mode. Therefore, the byte-sized operand is enclosed in a conversion operation, as in

 
(plus:SI (sign_extend:SI (reg:QI 34)) (reg:SI 80))

The conversion operation is not a mere placeholder, because there may be more than one way of converting from a given starting mode to the desired final mode. The conversion operation code says how to do it.

For all conversion operations, x must not be VOIDmode because the mode in which to do the conversion would not be known. The conversion must either be done at compile-time or x must be placed into a register.

(sign_extend:m x)
Represents the result of sign-extending the value x to machine mode m. m must be a fixed-point mode and x a fixed-point value of a mode narrower than m.

(zero_extend:m x)
Represents the result of zero-extending the value x to machine mode m. m must be a fixed-point mode and x a fixed-point value of a mode narrower than m.

(float_extend:m x)
Represents the result of extending the value x to machine mode m. m must be a floating point mode and x a floating point value of a mode narrower than m.

(truncate:m x)
Represents the result of truncating the value x to machine mode m. m must be a fixed-point mode and x a fixed-point value of a mode wider than m.

(ss_truncate:m x)
Represents the result of truncating the value x to machine mode m, using signed saturation in the case of overflow. Both m and the mode of x must be fixed-point modes.

(us_truncate:m x)
Represents the result of truncating the value x to machine mode m, using unsigned saturation in the case of overflow. Both m and the mode of x must be fixed-point modes.

(float_truncate:m x)
Represents the result of truncating the value x to machine mode m. m must be a floating point mode and x a floating point value of a mode wider than m.

(float:m x)
Represents the result of converting fixed point value x, regarded as signed, to floating point mode m.

(unsigned_float:m x)
Represents the result of converting fixed point value x, regarded as unsigned, to floating point mode m.

(fix:m x)
When m is a fixed point mode, represents the result of converting floating point value x to mode m, regarded as signed. How rounding is done is not specified, so this operation may be used validly in compiling C code only for integer-valued operands.

(unsigned_fix:m x)
Represents the result of converting floating point value x to fixed point mode m, regarded as unsigned. How rounding is done is not specified.

(fix:m x)
When m is a floating point mode, represents the result of converting floating point value x (valid for mode m) to an integer, still represented in floating point mode m, by rounding towards zero.


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8.13 Declarations

Declaration expression codes do not represent arithmetic operations but rather state assertions about their operands.

(strict_low_part (subreg:m (reg:n r) 0))
This expression code is used in only one context: as the destination operand of a set expression. In addition, the operand of this expression must be a non-paradoxical subreg expression.

The presence of strict_low_part says that the part of the register which is meaningful in mode n, but is not part of mode m, is not to be altered. Normally, an assignment to such a subreg is allowed to have undefined effects on the rest of the register when m is less than a word.


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8.14 Side Effect Expressions

The expression codes described so far represent values, not actions. But machine instructions never produce values; they are meaningful only for their side effects on the state of the machine. Special expression codes are used to represent side effects.

The body of an instruction is always one of these side effect codes; the codes described above, which represent values, appear only as the operands of these.

(set lval x)
Represents the action of storing the value of x into the place represented by lval. lval must be an expression representing a place that can be stored in: reg (or subreg or strict_low_part), mem, pc, parallel, or cc0.

If lval is a reg, subreg or mem, it has a machine mode; then x must be valid for that mode.

If lval is a reg whose machine mode is less than the full width of the register, then it means that the part of the register specified by the machine mode is given the specified value and the rest of the register receives an undefined value. Likewise, if lval is a subreg whose machine mode is narrower than the mode of the register, the rest of the register can be changed in an undefined way.

If lval is a strict_low_part of a subreg, then the part of the register specified by the machine mode of the subreg is given the value x and the rest of the register is not changed.

If lval is (cc0), it has no machine mode, and x may be either a compare expression or a value that may have any mode. The latter case represents a "test" instruction. The expression (set (cc0) (reg:m n)) is equivalent to (set (cc0) (compare (reg:m n) (const_int 0))). Use the former expression to save space during the compilation.

If lval is a parallel, it is used to represent the case of a function returning a structure in multiple registers. Each element of the parallel is an expr_list whose first operand is a reg and whose second operand is a const_int representing the offset (in bytes) into the structure at which the data in that register corresponds. The first element may be null to indicate that the structure is also passed partly in memory.

If lval is (pc), we have a jump instruction, and the possibilities for x are very limited. It may be a label_ref expression (unconditional jump). It may be an if_then_else (conditional jump), in which case either the second or the third operand must be (pc) (for the case which does not jump) and the other of the two must be a label_ref (for the case which does jump). x may also be a mem or (plus:SI (pc) y), where y may be a reg or a mem; these unusual patterns are used to represent jumps through branch tables.

If lval is neither (cc0) nor (pc), the mode of lval must not be VOIDmode and the mode of x must be valid for the mode of lval.

lval is customarily accessed with the SET_DEST macro and x with the SET_SRC macro.

(return)
As the sole expression in a pattern, represents a return from the current function, on machines where this can be done with one instruction, such as VAXen. On machines where a multi-instruction "epilogue" must be executed in order to return from the function, returning is done by jumping to a label which precedes the epilogue, and the return expression code is never used.

Inside an if_then_else expression, represents the value to be placed in pc to return to the caller.

Note that an insn pattern of (return) is logically equivalent to (set (pc) (return)), but the latter form is never used.

(call function nargs)
Represents a function call. function is a mem expression whose address is the address of the function to be called. nargs is an expression which can be used for two purposes: on some machines it represents the number of bytes of stack argument; on others, it represents the number of argument registers.

Each machine has a standard machine mode which function must have. The machine description defines macro FUNCTION_MODE to expand into the requisite mode name. The purpose of this mode is to specify what kind of addressing is allowed, on machines where the allowed kinds of addressing depend on the machine mode being addressed.

(clobber x)
Represents the storing or possible storing of an unpredictable, undescribed value into x, which must be a reg, scratch, parallel or mem expression.

One place this is used is in string instructions that store standard values into particular hard registers. It may not be worth the trouble to describe the values that are stored, but it is essential to inform the compiler that the registers will be altered, lest it attempt to keep data in them across the string instruction.

If x is (mem:BLK (const_int 0)), it means that all memory locations must be presumed clobbered. If x is a parallel, it has the same meaning as a parallel in a set expression.

Note that the machine description classifies certain hard registers as "call-clobbered". All function call instructions are assumed by default to clobber these registers, so there is no need to use clobber expressions to indicate this fact. Also, each function call is assumed to have the potential to alter any memory location, unless the function is declared const.

If the last group of expressions in a parallel are each a clobber expression whose arguments are reg or match_scratch (see section 9.4 RTL Template) expressions, the combiner phase can add the appropriate clobber expressions to an insn it has constructed when doing so will cause a pattern to be matched.

This feature can be used, for example, on a machine that whose multiply and add instructions don't use an MQ register but which has an add-accumulate instruction that does clobber the MQ register. Similarly, a combined instruction might require a temporary register while the constituent instructions might not.

When a clobber expression for a register appears inside a parallel with other side effects, the register allocator guarantees that the register is unoccupied both before and after that insn. However, the reload phase may allocate a register used for one of the inputs unless the `&' constraint is specified for the selected alternative (see section 9.7.4 Constraint Modifier Characters). You can clobber either a specific hard register, a pseudo register, or a scratch expression; in the latter two cases, GCC will allocate a hard register that is available there for use as a temporary.

For instructions that require a temporary register, you should use scratch instead of a pseudo-register because this will allow the combiner phase to add the clobber when required. You do this by coding (clobber (match_scratch ...)). If you do clobber a pseudo register, use one which appears nowhere else--generate a new one each time. Otherwise, you may confuse CSE.

There is one other known use for clobbering a pseudo register in a parallel: when one of the input operands of the insn is also clobbered by the insn. In this case, using the same pseudo register in the clobber and elsewhere in the insn produces the expected results.

(use x)
Represents the use of the value of x. It indicates that the value in x at this point in the program is needed, even though it may not be apparent why this is so. Therefore, the compiler will not attempt to delete previous instructions whose only effect is to store a value in x. x must be a reg expression.

In some situations, it may be tempting to add a use of a register in a parallel to describe a situation where the value of a special register will modify the behavior of the instruction. An hypothetical example might be a pattern for an addition that can either wrap around or use saturating addition depending on the value of a special control register:

 
(parallel [(set (reg:SI 2) (unspec:SI [(reg:SI 3)
                                       (reg:SI 4)] 0))
           (use (reg:SI 1))])

This will not work, several of the optimizers only look at expressions locally; it is very likely that if you have multiple insns with identical inputs to the unspec, they will be optimized away even if register 1 changes in between.

This means that use can only be used to describe that the register is live. You should think twice before adding use statements, more often you will want to use unspec instead. The use RTX is most commonly useful to describe that a fixed register is implicitly used in an insn. It is also safe to use in patterns where the compiler knows for other reasons that the result of the whole pattern is variable, such as `movstrm' or `call' patterns.

During the reload phase, an insn that has a use as pattern can carry a reg_equal note. These use insns will be deleted before the reload phase exits.

During the delayed branch scheduling phase, x may be an insn. This indicates that x previously was located at this place in the code and its data dependencies need to be taken into account. These use insns will be deleted before the delayed branch scheduling phase exits.

(parallel [x0 x1 ...])
Represents several side effects performed in parallel. The square brackets stand for a vector; the operand of parallel is a vector of expressions. x0, x1 and so on are individual side effect expressions--expressions of code set, call, return, clobber or use.

"In parallel" means that first all the values used in the individual side-effects are computed, and second all the actual side-effects are performed. For example,

 
(parallel [(set (reg:SI 1) (mem:SI (reg:SI 1)))
           (set (mem:SI (reg:SI 1)) (reg:SI 1))])

says unambiguously that the values of hard register 1 and the memory location addressed by it are interchanged. In both places where (reg:SI 1) appears as a memory address it refers to the value in register 1 before the execution of the insn.

It follows that it is incorrect to use parallel and expect the result of one set to be available for the next one. For example, people sometimes attempt to represent a jump-if-zero instruction this way:

 
(parallel [(set (cc0) (reg:SI 34))
           (set (pc) (if_then_else
                        (eq (cc0) (const_int 0))
                        (label_ref ...)
                        (pc)))])

But this is incorrect, because it says that the jump condition depends on the condition code value before this instruction, not on the new value that is set by this instruction.

Peephole optimization, which takes place together with final assembly code output, can produce insns whose patterns consist of a parallel whose elements are the operands needed to output the resulting assembler code--often reg, mem or constant expressions. This would not be well-formed RTL at any other stage in compilation, but it is ok then because no further optimization remains to be done. However, the definition of the macro NOTICE_UPDATE_CC, if any, must deal with such insns if you define any peephole optimizations.

(cond_exec [cond expr])
Represents a conditionally executed expression. The expr is executed only if the cond is nonzero. The cond expression must not have side-effects, but the expr may very well have side-effects.

(sequence [insns ...])
Represents a sequence of insns. Each of the insns that appears in the vector is suitable for appearing in the chain of insns, so it must be an insn, jump_insn, call_insn, code_label, barrier or note.

A sequence RTX is never placed in an actual insn during RTL generation. It represents the sequence of insns that result from a define_expand before those insns are passed to emit_insn to insert them in the chain of insns. When actually inserted, the individual sub-insns are separated out and the sequence is forgotten.

After delay-slot scheduling is completed, an insn and all the insns that reside in its delay slots are grouped together into a sequence. The insn requiring the delay slot is the first insn in the vector; subsequent insns are to be placed in the delay slot.

INSN_ANNULLED_BRANCH_P is set on an insn in a delay slot to indicate that a branch insn should be used that will conditionally annul the effect of the insns in the delay slots. In such a case, INSN_FROM_TARGET_P indicates that the insn is from the target of the branch and should be executed only if the branch is taken; otherwise the insn should be executed only if the branch is not taken. See section 9.18.7 Delay Slot Scheduling.

These expression codes appear in place of a side effect, as the body of an insn, though strictly speaking they do not always describe side effects as such:

(asm_input s)
Represents literal assembler code as described by the string s.

(unspec [operands ...] index)
(unspec_volatile [operands ...] index)
Represents a machine-specific operation on operands. index selects between multiple machine-specific operations. unspec_volatile is used for volatile operations and operations that may trap; unspec is used for other operations.

These codes may appear inside a pattern of an insn, inside a parallel, or inside an expression.

(addr_vec:m [lr0 lr1 ...])
Represents a table of jump addresses. The vector elements lr0, etc., are label_ref expressions. The mode m specifies how much space is given to each address; normally m would be Pmode.

(addr_diff_vec:m base [lr0 lr1 ...] min max flags)
Represents a table of jump addresses expressed as offsets from base. The vector elements lr0, etc., are label_ref expressions and so is base. The mode m specifies how much space is given to each address-difference. min and max are set up by branch shortening and hold a label with a minimum and a maximum address, respectively. flags indicates the relative position of base, min and max to the containing insn and of min and max to base. See rtl.def for details.

(prefetch:m addr rw locality)
Represents prefetch of memory at address addr. Operand rw is 1 if the prefetch is for data to be written, 0 otherwise; targets that do not support write prefetches should treat this as a normal prefetch. Operand locality specifies the amount of temporal locality; 0 if there is none or 1, 2, or 3 for increasing levels of temporal locality; targets that do not support locality hints should ignore this.

This insn is used to minimize cache-miss latency by moving data into a cache before it is accessed. It should use only non-faulting data prefetch instructions.


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8.15 Embedded Side-Effects on Addresses

Six special side-effect expression codes appear as memory addresses.

(pre_dec:m x)
Represents the side effect of decrementing x by a standard amount and represents also the value that x has after being decremented. x must be a reg or mem, but most machines allow only a reg. m must be the machine mode for pointers on the machine in use. The amount x is decremented by is the length in bytes of the machine mode of the containing memory reference of which this expression serves as the address. Here is an example of its use:

 
(mem:DF (pre_dec:SI (reg:SI 39)))

This says to decrement pseudo register 39 by the length of a DFmode value and use the result to address a DFmode value.

(pre_inc:m x)
Similar, but specifies incrementing x instead of decrementing it.

(post_dec:m x)
Represents the same side effect as pre_dec but a different value. The value represented here is the value x has before being decremented.

(post_inc:m x)
Similar, but specifies incrementing x instead of decrementing it.

(post_modify:m x y)

Represents the side effect of setting x to y and represents x before x is modified. x must be a reg or mem, but most machines allow only a reg. m must be the machine mode for pointers on the machine in use. The amount x is decremented by is the length in bytes of the machine mode of the containing memory reference of which this expression serves as the address. Note that this is not currently implemented.

The expression y must be one of three forms:

(plus:m x z), (minus:m x z), or (plus:m x i),
where z is an index register and i is a constant.

Here is an example of its use:

 
(mem:SF (post_modify:SI (reg:SI 42) (plus (reg:SI 42)
                                          (reg:SI 48))))

This says to modify pseudo register 42 by adding the contents of pseudo register 48 to it, after the use of what ever 42 points to.

(pre_modify:m x expr)
Similar except side effects happen before the use.

These embedded side effect expressions must be used with care. Instruction patterns may not use them. Until the `flow' pass of the compiler, they may occur only to represent pushes onto the stack. The `flow' pass finds cases where registers are incremented or decremented in one instruction and used as an address shortly before or after; these cases are then transformed to use pre- or post-increment or -decrement.

If a register used as the operand of these expressions is used in another address in an insn, the original value of the register is used. Uses of the register outside of an address are not permitted within the same insn as a use in an embedded side effect expression because such insns behave differently on different machines and hence must be treated as ambiguous and disallowed.

An instruction that can be represented with an embedded side effect could also be represented using parallel containing an additional set to describe how the address register is altered. This is not done because machines that allow these operations at all typically allow them wherever a memory address is called for. Describing them as additional parallel stores would require doubling the number of entries in the machine description.


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8.16 Assembler Instructions as Expressions

The RTX code asm_operands represents a value produced by a user-specified assembler instruction. It is used to represent an asm statement with arguments. An asm statement with a single output operand, like this:

 
asm ("foo %1,%2,%0" : "=a" (outputvar) : "g" (x + y), "di" (*z));

is represented using a single asm_operands RTX which represents the value that is stored in outputvar:

 
(set rtx-for-outputvar
     (asm_operands "foo %1,%2,%0" "a" 0
                   [rtx-for-addition-result rtx-for-*z]
                   [(asm_input:m1 "g")
                    (asm_input:m2 "di")]))

Here the operands of the asm_operands RTX are the assembler template string, the output-operand's constraint, the index-number of the output operand among the output operands specified, a vector of input operand RTX's, and a vector of input-operand modes and constraints. The mode m1 is the mode of the sum x+y; m2 is that of *z.

When an asm statement has multiple output values, its insn has several such set RTX's inside of a parallel. Each set contains a asm_operands; all of these share the same assembler template and vectors, but each contains the constraint for the respective output operand. They are also distinguished by the output-operand index number, which is 0, 1, ... for successive output operands.


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8.17 Insns

The RTL representation of the code for a function is a doubly-linked chain of objects called insns. Insns are expressions with special codes that are used for no other purpose. Some insns are actual instructions; others represent dispatch tables for switch statements; others represent labels to jump to or various sorts of declarative information.

In addition to its own specific data, each insn must have a unique id-number that distinguishes it from all other insns in the current function (after delayed branch scheduling, copies of an insn with the same id-number may be present in multiple places in a function, but these copies will always be identical and will only appear inside a sequence), and chain pointers to the preceding and following insns. These three fields occupy the same position in every insn, independent of the expression code of the insn. They could be accessed with XEXP and XINT, but instead three special macros are always used:

INSN_UID (i)
Accesses the unique id of insn i.

PREV_INSN (i)
Accesses the chain pointer to the insn preceding i. If i is the first insn, this is a null pointer.

NEXT_INSN (i)
Accesses the chain pointer to the insn following i. If i is the last insn, this is a null pointer.

The first insn in the chain is obtained by calling get_insns; the last insn is the result of calling get_last_insn. Within the chain delimited by these insns, the NEXT_INSN and PREV_INSN pointers must always correspond: if insn is not the first insn,

 
NEXT_INSN (PREV_INSN (insn)) == insn

is always true and if insn is not the last insn,

 
PREV_INSN (NEXT_INSN (insn)) == insn

is always true.

After delay slot scheduling, some of the insns in the chain might be sequence expressions, which contain a vector of insns. The value of NEXT_INSN in all but the last of these insns is the next insn in the vector; the value of NEXT_INSN of the last insn in the vector is the same as the value of NEXT_INSN for the sequence in which it is contained. Similar rules apply for PREV_INSN.

This means that the above invariants are not necessarily true for insns inside sequence expressions. Specifically, if insn is the first insn in a sequence, NEXT_INSN (PREV_INSN (insn)) is the insn containing the sequence expression, as is the value of PREV_INSN (NEXT_INSN (insn)) if insn is the last insn in the sequence expression. You can use these expressions to find the containing sequence expression.

Every insn has one of the following six expression codes:

insn
The expression code insn is used for instructions that do not jump and do not do function calls. sequence expressions are always contained in insns with code insn even if one of those insns should jump or do function calls.

Insns with code insn have four additional fields beyond the three mandatory ones listed above. These four are described in a table below.

jump_insn
The expression code jump_insn is used for instructions that may jump (or, more generally, may contain label_ref expressions). If there is an instruction to return from the current function, it is recorded as a jump_insn.

jump_insn insns have the same extra fields as insn insns, accessed in the same way and in addition contain a field JUMP_LABEL which is defined once jump optimization has completed.

For simple conditional and unconditional jumps, this field contains the code_label to which this insn will (possibly conditionally) branch. In a more complex jump, JUMP_LABEL records one of the labels that the insn refers to; the only way to find the others is to scan the entire body of the insn. In an addr_vec, JUMP_LABEL is NULL_RTX.

Return insns count as jumps, but since they do not refer to any labels, their JUMP_LABEL is NULL_RTX.

call_insn
The expression code call_insn is used for instructions that may do function calls. It is important to distinguish these instructions because they imply that certain registers and memory locations may be altered unpredictably.

call_insn insns have the same extra fields as insn insns, accessed in the same way and in addition contain a field CALL_INSN_FUNCTION_USAGE, which contains a list (chain of expr_list expressions) containing use and clobber expressions that denote hard registers and MEMs used or clobbered by the called function.

A MEM generally points to a stack slots in which arguments passed to the libcall by reference (see section FUNCTION_ARG_PASS_BY_REFERENCE) are stored. If the argument is caller-copied (see section FUNCTION_ARG_CALLEE_COPIES), the stack slot will be mentioned in CLOBBER and USE entries; if it's callee-copied, only a USE will appear, and the MEM may point to addresses that are not stack slots. These MEMs are used only in libcalls, because, unlike regular function calls, CONST_CALLs (which libcalls generally are, see section CONST_CALL_P) aren't assumed to read and write all memory, so flow would consider the stores dead and remove them. Note that, since a libcall must never return values in memory (see section RETURN_IN_MEMORY), there will never be a CLOBBER for a memory address holding a return value.

CLOBBERed registers in this list augment registers specified in CALL_USED_REGISTERS (see section 10.8.1 Basic Characteristics of Registers).

code_label
A code_label insn represents a label that a jump insn can jump to. It contains two special fields of data in addition to the three standard ones. CODE_LABEL_NUMBER is used to hold the label number, a number that identifies this label uniquely among all the labels in the compilation (not just in the current function). Ultimately, the label is represented in the assembler output as an assembler label, usually of the form `Ln' where n is the label number.

When a code_label appears in an RTL expression, it normally appears within a label_ref which represents the address of the label, as a number.

Besides as a code_label, a label can also be represented as a note of type NOTE_INSN_DELETED_LABEL.

The field LABEL_NUSES is only defined once the jump optimization phase is completed and contains the number of times this label is referenced in the current function.

The field LABEL_ALTERNATE_NAME is used to associate a name with a code_label. If this field is defined, the alternate name will be emitted instead of an internally generated label name.

barrier
Barriers are placed in the instruction stream when control cannot flow past them. They are placed after unconditional jump instructions to indicate that the jumps are unconditional and after calls to volatile functions, which do not return (e.g., exit). They contain no information beyond the three standard fields.

note
note insns are used to represent additional debugging and declarative information. They contain two nonstandard fields, an integer which is accessed with the macro NOTE_LINE_NUMBER and a string accessed with NOTE_SOURCE_FILE.

If NOTE_LINE_NUMBER is positive, the note represents the position of a source line and NOTE_SOURCE_FILE is the source file name that the line came from. These notes control generation of line number data in the assembler output.

Otherwise, NOTE_LINE_NUMBER is not really a line number but a code with one of the following values (and NOTE_SOURCE_FILE must contain a null pointer):

NOTE_INSN_DELETED
Such a note is completely ignorable. Some passes of the compiler delete insns by altering them into notes of this kind.

NOTE_INSN_DELETED_LABEL
This marks what used to be a code_label, but was not used for other purposes than taking its address and was transformed to mark that no code jumps to it.

NOTE_INSN_BLOCK_BEG
NOTE_INSN_BLOCK_END
These types of notes indicate the position of the beginning and end of a level of scoping of variable names. They control the output of debugging information.

NOTE_INSN_EH_REGION_BEG
NOTE_INSN_EH_REGION_END
These types of notes indicate the position of the beginning and end of a level of scoping for exception handling. NOTE_BLOCK_NUMBER identifies which CODE_LABEL or note of type NOTE_INSN_DELETED_LABEL is associated with the given region.

NOTE_INSN_LOOP_BEG
NOTE_INSN_LOOP_END
These types of notes indicate the position of the beginning and end of a while or for loop. They enable the loop optimizer to find loops quickly.

NOTE_INSN_LOOP_CONT
Appears at the place in a loop that continue statements jump to.

NOTE_INSN_LOOP_VTOP
This note indicates the place in a loop where the exit test begins for those loops in which the exit test has been duplicated. This position becomes another virtual start of the loop when considering loop invariants.

NOTE_INSN_FUNCTION_END
Appears near the end of the function body, just before the label that return statements jump to (on machine where a single instruction does not suffice for returning). This note may be deleted by jump optimization.

NOTE_INSN_SETJMP
Appears following each call to setjmp or a related function.

These codes are printed symbolically when they appear in debugging dumps.

The machine mode of an insn is normally VOIDmode, but some phases use the mode for various purposes.

The common subexpression elimination pass sets the mode of an insn to QImode when it is the first insn in a block that has already been processed.

The second Haifa scheduling pass, for targets that can multiple issue, sets the mode of an insn to TImode when it is believed that the instruction begins an issue group. That is, when the instruction cannot issue simultaneously with the previous. This may be relied on by later passes, in particular machine-dependent reorg.

Here is a table of the extra fields of insn, jump_insn and call_insn insns:

PATTERN (i)
An expression for the side effect performed by this insn. This must be one of the following codes: set, call, use, clobber, return, asm_input, asm_output, addr_vec, addr_diff_vec, trap_if, unspec, unspec_volatile, parallel, cond_exec, or sequence. If it is a parallel, each element of the parallel must be one these codes, except that parallel expressions cannot be nested and addr_vec and addr_diff_vec are not permitted inside a parallel expression.

INSN_CODE (i)
An integer that says which pattern in the machine description matches this insn, or -1 if the matching has not yet been attempted.

Such matching is never attempted and this field remains -1 on an insn whose pattern consists of a single use, clobber, asm_input, addr_vec or addr_diff_vec expression.

Matching is also never attempted on insns that result from an asm statement. These contain at least one asm_operands expression. The function asm_noperands returns a non-negative value for such insns.

In the debugging output, this field is printed as a number followed by a symbolic representation that locates the pattern in the `md' file as some small positive or negative offset from a named pattern.

LOG_LINKS (i)
A list (chain of insn_list expressions) giving information about dependencies between instructions within a basic block. Neither a jump nor a label may come between the related insns.

REG_NOTES (i)
A list (chain of expr_list and insn_list expressions) giving miscellaneous information about the insn. It is often information pertaining to the registers used in this insn.

The LOG_LINKS field of an insn is a chain of insn_list expressions. Each of these has two operands: the first is an insn, and the second is another insn_list expression (the next one in the chain). The last insn_list in the chain has a null pointer as second operand. The significant thing about the chain is which insns appear in it (as first operands of insn_list expressions). Their order is not significant.

This list is originally set up by the flow analysis pass; it is a null pointer until then. Flow only adds links for those data dependencies which can be used for instruction combination. For each insn, the flow analysis pass adds a link to insns which store into registers values that are used for the first time in this insn. The instruction scheduling pass adds extra links so that every dependence will be represented. Links represent data dependencies, antidependencies and output dependencies; the machine mode of the link distinguishes these three types: antidependencies have mode REG_DEP_ANTI, output dependencies have mode REG_DEP_OUTPUT, and data dependencies have mode VOIDmode.

The REG_NOTES field of an insn is a chain similar to the LOG_LINKS field but it includes expr_list expressions in addition to insn_list expressions. There are several kinds of register notes, which are distinguished by the machine mode, which in a register note is really understood as being an enum reg_note. The first operand op of the note is data whose meaning depends on the kind of note.

The macro REG_NOTE_KIND (x) returns the kind of register note. Its counterpart, the macro PUT_REG_NOTE_KIND (x, newkind) sets the register note type of x to be newkind.

Register notes are of three classes: They may say something about an input to an insn, they may say something about an output of an insn, or they may create a linkage between two insns. There are also a set of values that are only used in LOG_LINKS.

These register notes annotate inputs to an insn:

REG_DEAD
The value in op dies in this insn; that is to say, altering the value immediately after this insn would not affect the future behavior of the program.

It does not follow that the register op has no useful value after this insn since op is not necessarily modified by this insn. Rather, no subsequent instruction uses the contents of op.

REG_UNUSED
The register op being set by this insn will not be used in a subsequent insn. This differs from a REG_DEAD note, which indicates that the value in an input will not be used subsequently. These two notes are independent; both may be present for the same register.

REG_INC
The register op is incremented (or decremented; at this level there is no distinction) by an embedded side effect inside this insn. This means it appears in a post_inc, pre_inc, post_dec or pre_dec expression.

REG_NONNEG
The register op is known to have a nonnegative value when this insn is reached. This is used so that decrement and branch until zero instructions, such as the m68k dbra, can be matched.

The REG_NONNEG note is added to insns only if the machine description has a `decrement_and_branch_until_zero' pattern.

REG_NO_CONFLICT
This insn does not cause a conflict between op and the item being set by this insn even though it might appear that it does. In other words, if the destination register and op could otherwise be assigned the same register, this insn does not prevent that assignment.

Insns with this note are usually part of a block that begins with a clobber insn specifying a multi-word pseudo register (which will be the output of the block), a group of insns that each set one word of the value and have the REG_NO_CONFLICT note attached, and a final insn that copies the output to itself with an attached REG_EQUAL note giving the expression being computed. This block is encapsulated with REG_LIBCALL and REG_RETVAL notes on the first and last insns, respectively.

REG_LABEL
This insn uses op, a code_label or a note of type NOTE_INSN_DELETED_LABEL, but is not a jump_insn, or it is a jump_insn that required the label to be held in a register. The presence of this note allows jump optimization to be aware that op is, in fact, being used, and flow optimization to build an accurate flow graph.

The following notes describe attributes of outputs of an insn:

REG_EQUIV
REG_EQUAL
This note is only valid on an insn that sets only one register and indicates that that register will be equal to op at run time; the scope of this equivalence differs between the two types of notes. The value which the insn explicitly copies into the register may look different from op, but they will be equal at run time. If the output of the single set is a strict_low_part expression, the note refers to the register that is contained in SUBREG_REG of the subreg expression.

For REG_EQUIV, the register is equivalent to op throughout the entire function, and could validly be replaced in all its occurrences by op. ("Validly" here refers to the data flow of the program; simple replacement may make some insns invalid.) For example, when a constant is loaded into a register that is never assigned any other value, this kind of note is used.

When a parameter is copied into a pseudo-register at entry to a function, a note of this kind records that the register is equivalent to the stack slot where the parameter was passed. Although in this case the register may be set by other insns, it is still valid to replace the register by the stack slot throughout the function.

A REG_EQUIV note is also used on an instruction which copies a register parameter into a pseudo-register at entry to a function, if there is a stack slot where that parameter could be stored. Although other insns may set the pseudo-register, it is valid for the compiler to replace the pseudo-register by stack slot throughout the function, provided the compiler ensures that the stack slot is properly initialized by making the replacement in the initial copy instruction as well. This is used on machines for which the calling convention allocates stack space for register parameters. See REG_PARM_STACK_SPACE in 10.10.6 Passing Function Arguments on the Stack.

In the case of REG_EQUAL, the register that is set by this insn will be equal to op at run time at the end of this insn but not necessarily elsewhere in the function. In this case, op is typically an arithmetic expression. For example, when a sequence of insns such as a library call is used to perform an arithmetic operation, this kind of note is attached to the insn that produces or copies the final value.

These two notes are used in different ways by the compiler passes. REG_EQUAL is used by passes prior to register allocation (such as common subexpression elimination and loop optimization) to tell them how to think of that value. REG_EQUIV notes are used by register allocation to indicate that there is an available substitute expression (either a constant or a mem expression for the location of a parameter on the stack) that may be used in place of a register if insufficient registers are available.

Except for stack homes for parameters, which are indicated by a REG_EQUIV note and are not useful to the early optimization passes and pseudo registers that are equivalent to a memory location throughout their entire life, which is not detected until later in the compilation, all equivalences are initially indicated by an attached REG_EQUAL note. In the early stages of register allocation, a REG_EQUAL note is changed into a REG_EQUIV note if op is a constant and the insn represents the only set of its destination register.

Thus, compiler passes prior to register allocation need only check for REG_EQUAL notes and passes subsequent to register allocation need only check for REG_EQUIV notes.

REG_WAS_0
The single output of this insn contained zero before this insn. op is the insn that set it to zero. You can rely on this note if it is present and op has not been deleted or turned into a note; its absence implies nothing.

These notes describe linkages between insns. They occur in pairs: one insn has one of a pair of notes that points to a second insn, which has the inverse note pointing back to the first insn.

REG_RETVAL
This insn copies the value of a multi-insn sequence (for example, a library call), and op is the first insn of the sequence (for a library call, the first insn that was generated to set up the arguments for the library call).

Loop optimization uses this note to treat such a sequence as a single operation for code motion purposes and flow analysis uses this note to delete such sequences whose results are dead.

A REG_EQUAL note will also usually be attached to this insn to provide the expression being computed by the sequence.

These notes will be deleted after reload, since they are no longer accurate or useful.

REG_LIBCALL
This is the inverse of REG_RETVAL: it is placed on the first insn of a multi-insn sequence, and it points to the last one.

These notes are deleted after reload, since they are no longer useful or accurate.

REG_CC_SETTER
REG_CC_USER
On machines that use cc0, the insns which set and use cc0 set and use cc0 are adjacent. However, when branch delay slot filling is done, this may no longer be true. In this case a REG_CC_USER note will be placed on the insn setting cc0 to point to the insn using cc0 and a REG_CC_SETTER note will be placed on the insn using cc0 to point to the insn setting cc0.

These values are only used in the LOG_LINKS field, and indicate the type of dependency that each link represents. Links which indicate a data dependence (a read after write dependence) do not use any code, they simply have mode VOIDmode, and are printed without any descriptive text.

REG_DEP_ANTI
This indicates an anti dependence (a write after read dependence).

REG_DEP_OUTPUT
This indicates an output dependence (a write after write dependence).

These notes describe information gathered from gcov profile data. They are stored in the REG_NOTES field of an insn as an expr_list.

REG_EXEC_COUNT
This is used to indicate the number of times a basic block was executed according to the profile data. The note is attached to the first insn in the basic block.

REG_BR_PROB
This is used to specify the ratio of branches to non-branches of a branch insn according to the profile data. The value is stored as a value between 0 and REG_BR_PROB_BASE; larger values indicate a higher probability that the branch will be taken.

REG_BR_PRED
These notes are found in JUMP insns after delayed branch scheduling has taken place. They indicate both the direction and the likelihood of the JUMP. The format is a bitmask of ATTR_FLAG_* values.

REG_FRAME_RELATED_EXPR
This is used on an RTX_FRAME_RELATED_P insn wherein the attached expression is used in place of the actual insn pattern. This is done in cases where the pattern is either complex or misleading.

For convenience, the machine mode in an insn_list or expr_list is printed using these symbolic codes in debugging dumps.

The only difference between the expression codes insn_list and expr_list is that the first operand of an insn_list is assumed to be an insn and is printed in debugging dumps as the insn's unique id; the first operand of an expr_list is printed in the ordinary way as an expression.


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8.18 RTL Representation of Function-Call Insns

Insns that call subroutines have the RTL expression code call_insn. These insns must satisfy special rules, and their bodies must use a special RTL expression code, call.

A call expression has two operands, as follows:

 
(call (mem:fm addr) nbytes)

Here nbytes is an operand that represents the number of bytes of argument data being passed to the subroutine, fm is a machine mode (which must equal as the definition of the FUNCTION_MODE macro in the machine description) and addr represents the address of the subroutine.

For a subroutine that returns no value, the call expression as shown above is the entire body of the insn, except that the insn might also contain use or clobber expressions.

For a subroutine that returns a value whose mode is not BLKmode, the value is returned in a hard register. If this register's number is r, then the body of the call insn looks like this:

 
(set (reg:m r)
     (call (mem:fm addr) nbytes))

This RTL expression makes it clear (to the optimizer passes) that the appropriate register receives a useful value in this insn.

When a subroutine returns a BLKmode value, it is handled by passing to the subroutine the address of a place to store the value. So the call insn itself does not "return" any value, and it has the same RTL form as a call that returns nothing.

On some machines, the call instruction itself clobbers some register, for example to contain the return address. call_insn insns on these machines should have a body which is a parallel that contains both the call expression and clobber expressions that indicate which registers are destroyed. Similarly, if the call instruction requires some register other than the stack pointer that is not explicitly mentioned it its RTL, a use subexpression should mention that register.

Functions that are called are assumed to modify all registers listed in the configuration macro CALL_USED_REGISTERS (see section 10.8.1 Basic Characteristics of Registers) and, with the exception of const functions and library calls, to modify all of memory.

Insns containing just use expressions directly precede the call_insn insn to indicate which registers contain inputs to the function. Similarly, if registers other than those in CALL_USED_REGISTERS are clobbered by the called function, insns containing a single clobber follow immediately after the call to indicate which registers.


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8.19 Structure Sharing Assumptions

The compiler assumes that certain kinds of RTL expressions are unique; there do not exist two distinct objects representing the same value. In other cases, it makes an opposite assumption: that no RTL expression object of a certain kind appears in more than one place in the containing structure.

These assumptions refer to a single function; except for the RTL objects that describe global variables and external functions, and a few standard objects such as small integer constants, no RTL objects are common to two functions.


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8.20 Reading RTL

To read an RTL object from a file, call read_rtx. It takes one argument, a stdio stream, and returns a single RTL object. This routine is defined in `read-rtl.c'. It is not available in the compiler itself, only the various programs that generate the compiler back end from the machine description.

People frequently have the idea of using RTL stored as text in a file as an interface between a language front end and the bulk of GCC. This idea is not feasible.

GCC was designed to use RTL internally only. Correct RTL for a given program is very dependent on the particular target machine. And the RTL does not contain all the information about the program.

The proper way to interface GCC to a new language front end is with the "tree" data structure, described in the files `tree.h' and `tree.def'. The documentation for this structure (see section 7. Trees: The intermediate representation used by the C and C++ front ends) is incomplete.


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9. Machine Descriptions

A machine description has two parts: a file of instruction patterns (`.md' file) and a C header file of macro definitions.

The `.md' file for a target machine contains a pattern for each instruction that the target machine supports (or at least each instruction that is worth telling the compiler about). It may also contain comments. A semicolon causes the rest of the line to be a comment, unless the semicolon is inside a quoted string.

See the next chapter for information on the C header file.

9.1 Overview of How the Machine Description is Used  How the machine description is used.
9.2 Everything about Instruction Patterns  How to write instruction patterns.
9.3 Example of define_insn  An explained example of a define_insn pattern.
9.4 RTL Template  The RTL template defines what insns match a pattern.
9.5 Output Templates and Operand Substitution  The output template says how to make assembler code from such an insn.
9.6 C Statements for Assembler Output  For more generality, write C code to output the assembler code.
9.7 Operand Constraints  When not all operands are general operands.
9.8 Standard Pattern Names For Generation  Names mark patterns to use for code generation.
9.9 When the Order of Patterns Matters  When the order of patterns makes a difference.
9.10 Interdependence of Patterns  Having one pattern may make you need another.
9.11 Defining Jump Instruction Patterns  Special considerations for patterns for jump insns.
9.12 Defining Looping Instruction Patterns  How to define patterns for special looping insns.
9.13 Canonicalization of Instructions  
9.14 Defining RTL Sequences for Code Generation  Generating a sequence of several RTL insns for a standard operation.
9.15 Defining How to Split Instructions  Splitting Instructions into Multiple Instructions.
9.16 Including Patterns in Machine Descriptions.  
9.17 Machine-Specific Peephole Optimizers  Defining machine-specific peephole optimizations.
9.18 Instruction Attributes  Specifying the value of attributes for generated insns.
9.19 Conditional Execution  Generating define_insn patterns for predication.
9.20 Constant Definitions  Defining symbolic constants that can be used in the md file.


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9.1 Overview of How the Machine Description is Used

There are three main conversions that happen in the compiler:

  1. The front end reads the source code and builds a parse tree.

  2. The parse tree is used to generate an RTL insn list based on named instruction patterns.

  3. The insn list is matched against the RTL templates to produce assembler code.

For the generate pass, only the names of the insns matter, from either a named define_insn or a define_expand. The compiler will choose the pattern with the right name and apply the operands according to the documentation later in this chapter, without regard for the RTL template or operand constraints. Note that the names the compiler looks for are hard-coded in the compiler--it will ignore unnamed patterns and patterns with names it doesn't know about, but if you don't provide a named pattern it needs, it will abort.

If a define_insn is used, the template given is inserted into the insn list. If a define_expand is used, one of three things happens, based on the condition logic. The condition logic may manually create new insns for the insn list, say via emit_insn(), and invoke DONE. For certain named patterns, it may invoke FAIL to tell the compiler to use an alternate way of performing that task. If it invokes neither DONE nor FAIL, the template given in the pattern is inserted, as if the define_expand were a define_insn.

Once the insn list is generated, various optimization passes convert, replace, and rearrange the insns in the insn list. This is where the define_split and define_peephole patterns get used, for example.

Finally, the insn list's RTL is matched up with the RTL templates in the define_insn patterns, and those patterns are used to emit the final assembly code. For this purpose, each named define_insn acts like it's unnamed, since the names are ignored.


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9.2 Everything about Instruction Patterns

Each instruction pattern contains an incomplete RTL expression, with pieces to be filled in later, operand constraints that restrict how the pieces can be filled in, and an output pattern or C code to generate the assembler output, all wrapped up in a define_insn expression.

A define_insn is an RTL expression containing four or five operands:

  1. An optional name. The presence of a name indicate that this instruction pattern can perform a certain standard job for the RTL-generation pass of the compiler. This pass knows certain names and will use the instruction patterns with those names, if the names are defined in the machine description.

    The absence of a name is indicated by writing an empty string where the name should go. Nameless instruction patterns are never used for generating RTL code, but they may permit several simpler insns to be combined later on.

    Names that are not thus known and used in RTL-generation have no effect; they are equivalent to no name at all.

    For the purpose of debugging the compiler, you may also specify a name beginning with the `*' character. Such a name is used only for identifying the instruction in RTL dumps; it is entirely equivalent to having a nameless pattern for all other purposes.

  2. The RTL template (see section 9.4 RTL Template) is a vector of incomplete RTL expressions which show what the instruction should look like. It is incomplete because it may contain match_operand, match_operator, and match_dup expressions that stand for operands of the instruction.

    If the vector has only one element, that element is the template for the instruction pattern. If the vector has multiple elements, then the instruction pattern is a parallel expression containing the elements described.

  3. A condition. This is a string which contains a C expression that is the final test to decide whether an insn body matches this pattern.

    For a named pattern, the condition (if present) may not depend on the data in the insn being matched, but only the target-machine-type flags. The compiler needs to test these conditions during initialization in order to learn exactly which named instructions are available in a particular run.

    For nameless patterns, the condition is applied only when matching an individual insn, and only after the insn has matched the pattern's recognition template. The insn's operands may be found in the vector operands. For an insn where the condition has once matched, it can't be used to control register allocation, for example by excluding certain hard registers or hard register combinations.

  4. The output template: a string that says how to output matching insns as assembler code. `%' in this string specifies where to substitute the value of an operand. See section 9.5 Output Templates and Operand Substitution.

    When simple substitution isn't general enough, you can specify a piece of C code to compute the output. See section 9.6 C Statements for Assembler Output.

  5. Optionally, a vector containing the values of attributes for insns matching this pattern. See section 9.18 Instruction Attributes.


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9.3 Example of define_insn

Here is an actual example of an instruction pattern, for the 68000/68020.

 
(define_insn "tstsi"
  [(set (cc0)
        (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "rm"))]
  ""
  "*
{
  if (TARGET_68020 || ! ADDRESS_REG_P (operands[0]))
    return \"tstl %0\";
  return \"cmpl #0,%0\";
}")

This can also be written using braced strings:

 
(define_insn "tstsi"
  [(set (cc0)
        (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "rm"))]
  ""
{
  if (TARGET_68020 || ! ADDRESS_REG_P (operands[0]))
    return "tstl %0";
  return "cmpl #0,%0";
})

This is an instruction that sets the condition codes based on the value of a general operand. It has no condition, so any insn whose RTL description has the form shown may be handled according to this pattern. The name `tstsi' means "test a SImode value" and tells the RTL generation pass that, when it is necessary to test such a value, an insn to do so can be constructed using this pattern.

The output control string is a piece of C code which chooses which output template to return based on the kind of operand and the specific type of CPU for which code is being generated.

`"rm"' is an operand constraint. Its meaning is explained below.


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9.4 RTL Template

The RTL template is used to define which insns match the particular pattern and how to find their operands. For named patterns, the RTL template also says how to construct an insn from specified operands.

Construction involves substituting specified operands into a copy of the template. Matching involves determining the values that serve as the operands in the insn being matched. Both of these activities are controlled by special expression types that direct matching and substitution of the operands.

(match_operand:m n predicate constraint)
This expression is a placeholder for operand number n of the insn. When constructing an insn, operand number n will be substituted at this point. When matching an insn, whatever appears at this position in the insn will be taken as operand number n; but it must satisfy predicate or this instruction pattern will not match at all.

Operand numbers must be chosen consecutively counting from zero in each instruction pattern. There may be only one match_operand expression in the pattern for each operand number. Usually operands are numbered in the order of appearance in match_operand expressions. In the case of a define_expand, any operand numbers used only in match_dup expressions have higher values than all other operand numbers.

predicate is a string that is the name of a C function that accepts two arguments, an expression and a machine mode. During matching, the function will be called with the putative operand as the expression and m as the mode argument (if m is not specified, VOIDmode will be used, which normally causes predicate to accept any mode). If it returns zero, this instruction pattern fails to match. predicate may be an empty string; then it means no test is to be done on the operand, so anything which occurs in this position is valid.

Most of the time, predicate will reject modes other than m---but not always. For example, the predicate address_operand uses m as the mode of memory ref that the address should be valid for. Many predicates accept const_int nodes even though their mode is VOIDmode.

constraint controls reloading and the choice of the best register class to use for a value, as explained later (see section 9.7 Operand Constraints).

People are often unclear on the difference between the constraint and the predicate. The predicate helps decide whether a given insn matches the pattern. The constraint plays no role in this decision; instead, it controls various decisions in the case of an insn which does match.

On CISC machines, the most common predicate is "general_operand". This function checks that the putative operand is either a constant, a register or a memory reference, and that it is valid for mode m.

For an operand that must be a register, predicate should be "register_operand". Using "general_operand" would be valid, since the reload pass would copy any non-register operands through registers, but this would make GCC do extra work, it would prevent invariant operands (such as constant) from being removed from loops, and it would prevent the register allocator from doing the best possible job. On RISC machines, it is usually most efficient to allow predicate to accept only objects that the constraints allow.

For an operand that must be a constant, you must be sure to either use "immediate_operand" for predicate, or make the instruction pattern's extra condition require a constant, or both. You cannot expect the constraints to do this work! If the constraints allow only constants, but the predicate allows something else, the compiler will crash when that case arises.

(match_scratch:m n constraint)
This expression is also a placeholder for operand number n and indicates that operand must be a scratch or reg expression.

When matching patterns, this is equivalent to

 
(match_operand:m n "scratch_operand" pred)

but, when generating RTL, it produces a (scratch:m) expression.

If the last few expressions in a parallel are clobber expressions whose operands are either a hard register or match_scratch, the combiner can add or delete them when necessary. See section 8.14 Side Effect Expressions.

(match_dup n)
This expression is also a placeholder for operand number n. It is used when the operand needs to appear more than once in the insn.

In construction, match_dup acts just like match_operand: the operand is substituted into the insn being constructed. But in matching, match_dup behaves differently. It assumes that operand number n has already been determined by a match_operand appearing earlier in the recognition template, and it matches only an identical-looking expression.

Note that match_dup should not be used to tell the compiler that a particular register is being used for two operands (example: add that adds one register to another; the second register is both an input operand and the output operand). Use a matching constraint (see section 9.7.1 Simple Constraints) for those. match_dup is for the cases where one operand is used in two places in the template, such as an instruction that computes both a quotient and a remainder, where the opcode takes two input operands but the RTL template has to refer to each of those twice; once for the quotient pattern and once for the remainder pattern.

(match_operator:m n predicate [operands...])
This pattern is a kind of placeholder for a variable RTL expression code.

When constructing an insn, it stands for an RTL expression whose expression code is taken from that of operand n, and whose operands are constructed from the patterns operands.

When matching an expression, it matches an expression if the function predicate returns nonzero on that expression and the patterns operands match the operands of the expression.

Suppose that the function commutative_operator is defined as follows, to match any expression whose operator is one of the commutative arithmetic operators of RTL and whose mode is mode:

 
int
commutative_operator (x, mode)
     rtx x;
     enum machine_mode mode;
{
  enum rtx_code code = GET_CODE (x);
  if (GET_MODE (x) != mode)
    return 0;
  return (GET_RTX_CLASS (code) == 'c'
          || code == EQ || code == NE);
}

Then the following pattern will match any RTL expression consisting of a commutative operator applied to two general operands:

 
(match_operator:SI 3 "commutative_operator"
  [(match_operand:SI 1 "general_operand" "g")
   (match_operand:SI 2 "general_operand" "g")])

Here the vector [operands...] contains two patterns because the expressions to be matched all contain two operands.

When this pattern does match, the two operands of the commutative operator are recorded as operands 1 and 2 of the insn. (This is done by the two instances of match_operand.) Operand 3 of the insn will be the entire commutative expression: use GET_CODE (operands[3]) to see which commutative operator was used.

The machine mode m of match_operator works like that of match_operand: it is passed as the second argument to the predicate function, and that function is solely responsible for deciding whether the expression to be matched "has" that mode.

When constructing an insn, argument 3 of the gen-function will specify the operation (i.e. the expression code) for the expression to be made. It should be an RTL expression, whose expression code is copied into a new expression whose operands are arguments 1 and 2 of the gen-function. The subexpressions of argument 3 are not used; only its expression code matters.

When match_operator is used in a pattern for matching an insn, it usually best if the operand number of the match_operator is higher than that of the actual operands of the insn. This improves register allocation because the register allocator often looks at operands 1 and 2 of insns to see if it can do register tying.

There is no way to specify constraints in match_operator. The operand of the insn which corresponds to the match_operator never has any constraints because it is never reloaded as a whole. However, if parts of its operands are matched by match_operand patterns, those parts may have constraints of their own.

(match_op_dup:m n[operands...])
Like match_dup, except that it applies to operators instead of operands. When constructing an insn, operand number n will be substituted at this point. But in matching, match_op_dup behaves differently. It assumes that operand number n has already been determined by a match_operator appearing earlier in the recognition template, and it matches only an identical-looking expression.

(match_parallel n predicate [subpat...])
This pattern is a placeholder for an insn that consists of a parallel expression with a variable number of elements. This expression should only appear at the top level of an insn pattern.

When constructing an insn, operand number n will be substituted at this point. When matching an insn, it matches if the body of the insn is a parallel expression with at least as many elements as the vector of subpat expressions in the match_parallel, if each subpat matches the corresponding element of the parallel, and the function predicate returns nonzero on the parallel that is the body of the insn. It is the responsibility of the predicate to validate elements of the parallel beyond those listed in the match_parallel.

A typical use of match_parallel is to match load and store multiple expressions, which can contain a variable number of elements in a parallel. For example,

 
(define_insn ""
  [(match_parallel 0 "load_multiple_operation"
     [(set (match_operand:SI 1 "gpc_reg_operand" "=r")
           (match_operand:SI 2 "memory_operand" "m"))
      (use (reg:SI 179))
      (clobber (reg:SI 179))])]
  ""
  "loadm 0,0,%1,%2")

This example comes from `a29k.md'. The function load_multiple_operation is defined in `a29k.c' and checks that subsequent elements in the parallel are the same as the set in the pattern, except that they are referencing subsequent registers and memory locations.

An insn that matches this pattern might look like:

 
(parallel
 [(set (reg:SI 20) (mem:SI (reg:SI 100)))
  (use (reg:SI 179))
  (clobber (reg:SI 179))
  (set (reg:SI 21)
       (mem:SI (plus:SI (reg:SI 100)
                        (const_int 4))))
  (set (reg:SI 22)
       (mem:SI (plus:SI (reg:SI 100)
                        (const_int 8))))])

(match_par_dup n [subpat...])
Like match_op_dup, but for match_parallel instead of match_operator.

(match_insn predicate)
Match a complete insn. Unlike the other match_* recognizers, match_insn does not take an operand number.

The machine mode m of match_insn works like that of match_operand: it is passed as the second argument to the predicate function, and that function is solely responsible for deciding whether the expression to be matched "has" that mode.

(match_insn2 n predicate)
Match a complete insn.

The machine mode m of match_insn2 works like that of match_operand: it is passed as the second argument to the predicate function, and that function is solely responsible for deciding whether the expression to be matched "has" that mode.


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9.5 Output Templates and Operand Substitution

The output template is a string which specifies how to output the assembler code for an instruction pattern. Most of the template is a fixed string which is output literally. The character `%' is used to specify where to substitute an operand; it can also be used to identify places where different variants of the assembler require different syntax.

In the simplest case, a `%' followed by a digit n says to output operand n at that point in the string.

`%' followed by a letter and a digit says to output an operand in an alternate fashion. Four letters have standard, built-in meanings described below. The machine description macro PRINT_OPERAND can define additional letters with nonstandard meanings.

`%cdigit' can be used to substitute an operand that is a constant value without the syntax that normally indicates an immediate operand.

`%ndigit' is like `%cdigit' except that the value of the constant is negated before printing.

`%adigit' can be used to substitute an operand as if it were a memory reference, with the actual operand treated as the address. This may be useful when outputting a "load address" instruction, because often the assembler syntax for such an instruction requires you to write the operand as if it were a memory reference.

`%ldigit' is used to substitute a label_ref into a jump instruction.

`%=' outputs a number which is unique to each instruction in the entire compilation. This is useful for making local labels to be referred to more than once in a single template that generates multiple assembler instructions.

`%' followed by a punctuation character specifies a substitution that does not use an operand. Only one case is standard: `%%' outputs a `%' into the assembler code. Other nonstandard cases can be defined in the PRINT_OPERAND macro. You must also define which punctuation characters are valid with the PRINT_OPERAND_PUNCT_VALID_P macro.

The template may generate multiple assembler instructions. Write the text for the instructions, with `\;' between them.

When the RTL contains two operands which are required by constraint to match each other, the output template must refer only to the lower-numbered operand. Matching operands are not always identical, and the rest of the compiler arranges to put the proper RTL expression for printing into the lower-numbered operand.

One use of nonstandard letters or punctuation following `%' is to distinguish between different assembler languages for the same machine; for example, Motorola syntax versus MIT syntax for the 68000. Motorola syntax requires periods in most opcode names, while MIT syntax does not. For example, the opcode `movel' in MIT syntax is `move.l' in Motorola syntax. The same file of patterns is used for both kinds of output syntax, but the character sequence `%.' is used in each place where Motorola syntax wants a period. The PRINT_OPERAND macro for Motorola syntax defines the sequence to output a period; the macro for MIT syntax defines it to do nothing.

As a special case, a template consisting of the single character # instructs the compiler to first split the insn, and then output the resulting instructions separately. This helps eliminate redundancy in the output templates. If you have a define_insn that needs to emit multiple assembler instructions, and there is an matching define_split already defined, then you can simply use # as the output template instead of writing an output template that emits the multiple assembler instructions.

If the macro ASSEMBLER_DIALECT is defined, you can use construct of the form `{option0|option1|option2}' in the templates. These describe multiple variants of assembler language syntax. See section 10.20.7 Output of Assembler Instructions.


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9.6 C Statements for Assembler Output

Often a single fixed template string cannot produce correct and efficient assembler code for all the cases that are recognized by a single instruction pattern. For example, the opcodes may depend on the kinds of operands; or some unfortunate combinations of operands may require extra machine instructions.

If the output control string starts with a `@', then it is actually a series of templates, each on a separate line. (Blank lines and leading spaces and tabs are ignored.) The templates correspond to the pattern's constraint alternatives (see section 9.7.2 Multiple Alternative Constraints). For example, if a target machine has a two-address add instruction `addr' to add into a register and another `addm' to add a register to memory, you might write this pattern:

 
(define_insn "addsi3"
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=r,m")
        (plus:SI (match_operand:SI 1 "general_operand" "0,0")
                 (match_operand:SI 2 "general_operand" "g,r")))]
  ""
  "@
   addr %2,%0
   addm %2,%0")

If the output control string starts with a `*', then it is not an output template but rather a piece of C program that should compute a template. It should execute a return statement to return the template-string you want. Most such templates use C string literals, which require doublequote characters to delimit them. To include these doublequote characters in the string, prefix each one with `\'.

If the output control string is written as a brace block instead of a double-quoted string, it is automatically assumed to be C code. In that case, it is not necessary to put in a leading asterisk, or to escape the doublequotes surrounding C string literals.

The operands may be found in the array operands, whose C data type is rtx [].

It is very common to select different ways of generating assembler code based on whether an immediate operand is within a certain range. Be careful when doing this, because the result of INTVAL is an integer on the host machine. If the host machine has more bits in an int than the target machine has in the mode in which the constant will be used, then some of the bits you get from INTVAL will be superfluous. For proper results, you must carefully disregard the values of those bits.

It is possible to output an assembler instruction and then go on to output or compute more of them, using the subroutine output_asm_insn. This receives two arguments: a template-string and a vector of operands. The vector may be operands, or it may be another array of rtx that you declare locally and initialize yourself.

When an insn pattern has multiple alternatives in its constraints, often the appearance of the assembler code is determined mostly by which alternative was matched. When this is so, the C code can test the variable which_alternative, which is the ordinal number of the alternative that was actually satisfied (0 for the first, 1 for the second alternative, etc.).

For example, suppose there are two opcodes for storing zero, `clrreg' for registers and `clrmem' for memory locations. Here is how a pattern could use which_alternative to choose between them:

 
(define_insn ""
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=r,m")
        (const_int 0))]
  ""
  {
  return (which_alternative == 0
          ? "clrreg %0" : "clrmem %0");
  })

The example above, where the assembler code to generate was solely determined by the alternative, could also have been specified as follows, having the output control string start with a `@':

 
(define_insn ""
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=r,m")
        (const_int 0))]
  ""
  "@
   clrreg %0
   clrmem %0")


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9.7 Operand Constraints

Each match_operand in an instruction pattern can specify a constraint for the type of operands allowed. Constraints can say whether an operand may be in a register, and which kinds of register; whether the operand can be a memory reference, and which kinds of address; whether the operand may be an immediate constant, and which possible values it may have. Constraints can also require two operands to match.

9.7.1 Simple Constraints  Basic use of constraints.
9.7.2 Multiple Alternative Constraints  When an insn has two alternative constraint-patterns.
9.7.3 Register Class Preferences  Constraints guide which hard register to put things in.
9.7.4 Constraint Modifier Characters  More precise control over effects of constraints.
9.7.5 Constraints for Particular Machines  Existing constraints for some particular machines.


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9.7.1 Simple Constraints

The simplest kind of constraint is a string full of letters, each of which describes one kind of operand that is permitted. Here are the letters that are allowed:

whitespace
Whitespace characters are ignored and can be inserted at any position except the first. This enables each alternative for different operands to be visually aligned in the machine description even if they have different number of constraints and modifiers.

`m'
A memory operand is allowed, with any kind of address that the machine supports in general.

`o'
A memory operand is allowed, but only if the address is offsettable. This means that adding a small integer (actually, the width in bytes of the operand, as determined by its machine mode) may be added to the address and the result is also a valid memory address.

For example, an address which is constant is offsettable; so is an address that is the sum of a register and a constant (as long as a slightly larger constant is also within the range of address-offsets supported by the machine); but an autoincrement or autodecrement address is not offsettable. More complicated indirect/indexed addresses may or may not be offsettable depending on the other addressing modes that the machine supports.

Note that in an output operand which can be matched by another operand, the constraint letter `o' is valid only when accompanied by both `<' (if the target machine has predecrement addressing) and `>' (if the target machine has preincrement addressing).

`V'
A memory operand that is not offsettable. In other words, anything that would fit the `m' constraint but not the `o' constraint.

`<'
A memory operand with autodecrement addressing (either predecrement or postdecrement) is allowed.

`>'
A memory operand with autoincrement addressing (either preincrement or postincrement) is allowed.

`r'
A register operand is allowed provided that it is in a general register.

`i'
An immediate integer operand (one with constant value) is allowed. This includes symbolic constants whose values will be known only at assembly time.

`n'
An immediate integer operand with a known numeric value is allowed. Many systems cannot support assembly-time constants for operands less than a word wide. Constraints for these operands should use `n' rather than `i'.

`I', `J', `K', ... `P'
Other letters in the range `I' through `P' may be defined in a machine-dependent fashion to permit immediate integer operands with explicit integer values in specified ranges. For example, on the 68000, `I' is defined to stand for the range of values 1 to 8. This is the range permitted as a shift count in the shift instructions.

`E'
An immediate floating operand (expression code const_double) is allowed, but only if the target floating point format is the same as that of the host machine (on which the compiler is running).

`F'
An immediate floating operand (expression code const_double) is allowed.

`G', `H'
`G' and `H' may be defined in a machine-dependent fashion to permit immediate floating operands in particular ranges of values.

`s'
An immediate integer operand whose value is not an explicit integer is allowed.

This might appear strange; if an insn allows a constant operand with a value not known at compile time, it certainly must allow any known value. So why use `s' instead of `i'? Sometimes it allows better code to be generated.

For example, on the 68000 in a fullword instruction it is possible to use an immediate operand; but if the immediate value is between -128 and 127, better code results from loading the value into a register and using the register. This is because the load into the register can be done with a `moveq' instruction. We arrange for this to happen by defining the letter `K' to mean "any integer outside the range -128 to 127", and then specifying `Ks' in the operand constraints.

`g'
Any register, memory or immediate integer operand is allowed, except for registers that are not general registers.

`X'
Any operand whatsoever is allowed, even if it does not satisfy general_operand. This is normally used in the constraint of a match_scratch when certain alternatives will not actually require a scratch register.

`0', `1', `2', ... `9'
An operand that matches the specified operand number is allowed. If a digit is used together with letters within the same alternative, the digit should come last.

This number is allowed to be more than a single digit. If multiple digits are encountered consecutavely, they are interpreted as a single decimal integer. There is scant chance for ambiguity, since to-date it has never been desirable that `10' be interpreted as matching either operand 1 or operand 0. Should this be desired, one can use multiple alternatives instead.

This is called a matching constraint and what it really means is that the assembler has only a single operand that fills two roles considered separate in the RTL insn. For example, an add insn has two input operands and one output operand in the RTL, but on most CISC machines an add instruction really has only two operands, one of them an input-output operand:

 
addl #35,r12

Matching constraints are used in these circumstances. More precisely, the two operands that match must include one input-only operand and one output-only operand. Moreover, the digit must be a smaller number than the number of the operand that uses it in the constraint.

For operands to match in a particular case usually means that they are identical-looking RTL expressions. But in a few special cases specific kinds of dissimilarity are allowed. For example, *x as an input operand will match *x++ as an output operand. For proper results in such cases, the output template should always use the output-operand's number when printing the operand.

`p'
An operand that is a valid memory address is allowed. This is for "load address" and "push address" instructions.

`p' in the constraint must be accompanied by address_operand as the predicate in the match_operand. This predicate interprets the mode specified in the match_operand as the mode of the memory reference for which the address would be valid.

other-letters
Other letters can be defined in machine-dependent fashion to stand for particular classes of registers or other arbitrary operand types. `d', `a' and `f' are defined on the 68000/68020 to stand for data, address and floating point registers.

The machine description macro REG_CLASS_FROM_LETTER has first cut at the otherwise unused letters. If it evaluates to NO_REGS, then EXTRA_CONSTRAINT is evaluated.

A typical use for EXTRA_CONSTRANT would be to distinguish certain types of memory references that affect other insn operands.

In order to have valid assembler code, each operand must satisfy its constraint. But a failure to do so does not prevent the pattern from applying to an insn. Instead, it directs the compiler to modify the code so that the constraint will be satisfied. Usually this is done by copying an operand into a register.

Contrast, therefore, the two instruction patterns that follow:

 
(define_insn ""
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=r")
        (plus:SI (match_dup 0)
                 (match_operand:SI 1 "general_operand" "r")))]
  ""
  "...")

which has two operands, one of which must appear in two places, and

 
(define_insn ""
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=r")
        (plus:SI (match_operand:SI 1 "general_operand" "0")
                 (match_operand:SI 2 "general_operand" "r")))]
  ""
  "...")

which has three operands, two of which are required by a constraint to be identical. If we are considering an insn of the form

 
(insn n prev next
  (set (reg:SI 3)
       (plus:SI (reg:SI 6) (reg:SI 109)))
  ...)

the first pattern would not apply at all, because this insn does not contain two identical subexpressions in the right place. The pattern would say, "That does not look like an add instruction; try other patterns." The second pattern would say, "Yes, that's an add instruction, but there is something wrong with it." It would direct the reload pass of the compiler to generate additional insns to make the constraint true. The results might look like this:

 
(insn n2 prev n
  (set (reg:SI 3) (reg:SI 6))
  ...)

(insn n n2 next
  (set (reg:SI 3)
       (plus:SI (reg:SI 3) (reg:SI 109)))
  ...)

It is up to you to make sure that each operand, in each pattern, has constraints that can handle any RTL expression that could be present for that operand. (When multiple alternatives are in use, each pattern must, for each possible combination of operand expressions, have at least one alternative which can handle that combination of operands.) The constraints don't need to allow any possible operand--when this is the case, they do not constrain--but they must at least point the way to reloading any possible operand so that it will fit.

If the operand's predicate can recognize registers, but the constraint does not permit them, it can make the compiler crash. When this operand happens to be a register, the reload pass will be stymied, because it does not know how to copy a register temporarily into memory.

If the predicate accepts a unary operator, the constraint applies to the operand. For example, the MIPS processor at ISA level 3 supports an instruction which adds two registers in SImode to produce a DImode result, but only if the registers are correctly sign extended. This predicate for the input operands accepts a sign_extend of an SImode register. Write the constraint to indicate the type of register that is required for the operand of the sign_extend.


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9.7.2 Multiple Alternative Constraints

Sometimes a single instruction has multiple alternative sets of possible operands. For example, on the 68000, a logical-or instruction can combine register or an immediate value into memory, or it can combine any kind of operand into a register; but it cannot combine one memory location into another.

These constraints are represented as multiple alternatives. An alternative can be described by a series of letters for each operand. The overall constraint for an operand is made from the letters for this operand from the first alternative, a comma, the letters for this operand from the second alternative, a comma, and so on until the last alternative. Here is how it is done for fullword logical-or on the 68000:

 
(define_insn "iorsi3"
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=m,d")
        (ior:SI (match_operand:SI 1 "general_operand" "%0,0")
                (match_operand:SI 2 "general_operand" "dKs,dmKs")))]
  ...)

The first alternative has `m' (memory) for operand 0, `0' for operand 1 (meaning it must match operand 0), and `dKs' for operand 2. The second alternative has `d' (data register) for operand 0, `0' for operand 1, and `dmKs' for operand 2. The `=' and `%' in the constraints apply to all the alternatives; their meaning is explained in the next section (see section 9.7.3 Register Class Preferences).

If all the operands fit any one alternative, the instruction is valid. Otherwise, for each alternative, the compiler counts how many instructions must be added to copy the operands so that that alternative applies. The alternative requiring the least copying is chosen. If two alternatives need the same amount of copying, the one that comes first is chosen. These choices can be altered with the `?' and `!' characters:

?
Disparage slightly the alternative that the `?' appears in, as a choice when no alternative applies exactly. The compiler regards this alternative as one unit more costly for each `?' that appears in it.

!
Disparage severely the alternative that the `!' appears in. This alternative can still be used if it fits without reloading, but if reloading is needed, some other alternative will be used.

When an insn pattern has multiple alternatives in its constraints, often the appearance of the assembler code is determined mostly by which alternative was matched. When this is so, the C code for writing the assembler code can use the variable which_alternative, which is the ordinal number of the alternative that was actually satisfied (0 for the first, 1 for the second alternative, etc.). See section 9.6 C Statements for Assembler Output.


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9.7.3 Register Class Preferences

The operand constraints have another function: they enable the compiler to decide which kind of hardware register a pseudo register is best allocated to. The compiler examines the constraints that apply to the insns that use the pseudo register, looking for the machine-dependent letters such as `d' and `a' that specify classes of registers. The pseudo register is put in whichever class gets the most "votes". The constraint letters `g' and `r' also vote: they vote in favor of a general register. The machine description says which registers are considered general.

Of course, on some machines all registers are equivalent, and no register classes are defined. Then none of this complexity is relevant.


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9.7.4 Constraint Modifier Characters

Here are constraint modifier characters.

`='
Means that this operand is write-only for this instruction: the previous value is discarded and replaced by output data.

`+'
Means that this operand is both read and written by the instruction.

When the compiler fixes up the operands to satisfy the constraints, it needs to know which operands are inputs to the instruction and which are outputs from it. `=' identifies an output; `+' identifies an operand that is both input and output; all other operands are assumed to be input only.

If you specify `=' or `+' in a constraint, you put it in the first character of the constraint string.

`&'
Means (in a particular alternative) that this operand is an earlyclobber operand, which is modified before the instruction is finished using the input operands. Therefore, this operand may not lie in a register that is used as an input operand or as part of any memory address.

`&' applies only to the alternative in which it is written. In constraints with multiple alternatives, sometimes one alternative requires `&' while others do not. See, for example, the `movdf' insn of the 68000.

An input operand can be tied to an earlyclobber operand if its only use as an input occurs before the early result is written. Adding alternatives of this form often allows GCC to produce better code when only some of the inputs can be affected by the earlyclobber. See, for example, the `mulsi3' insn of the ARM.

`&' does not obviate the need to write `='.

`%'
Declares the instruction to be commutative for this operand and the following operand. This means that the compiler may interchange the two operands if that is the cheapest way to make all operands fit the constraints. This is often used in patterns for addition instructions that really have only two operands: the result must go in one of the arguments. Here for example, is how the 68000 halfword-add instruction is defined:

 
(define_insn "addhi3"
  [(set (match_operand:HI 0 "general_operand" "=m,r")
     (plus:HI (match_operand:HI 1 "general_operand" "%0,0")
              (match_operand:HI 2 "general_operand" "di,g")))]
  ...)

`#'
Says that all following characters, up to the next comma, are to be ignored as a constraint. They are significant only for choosing register preferences.

`*'
Says that the following character should be ignored when choosing register preferences. `*' has no effect on the meaning of the constraint as a constraint, and no effect on reloading.

Here is an example: the 68000 has an instruction to sign-extend a halfword in a data register, and can also sign-extend a value by copying it into an address register. While either kind of register is acceptable, the constraints on an address-register destination are less strict, so it is best if register allocation makes an address register its goal. Therefore, `*' is used so that the `d' constraint letter (for data register) is ignored when computing register preferences.

 
(define_insn "extendhisi2"
  [(set (match_operand:SI 0 "general_operand" "=*d,a")
        (sign_extend:SI
         (match_operand:HI 1 "general_operand" "0,g")))]
  ...)


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9.7.5 Constraints for Particular Machines

Whenever possible, you should use the general-purpose constraint letters in asm arguments, since they will convey meaning more readily to people reading your code. Failing that, use the constraint letters that usually have very similar meanings across architectures. The most commonly used constraints are `m' and `r' (for memory and general-purpose registers respectively; see section 9.7.1 Simple Constraints), and `I', usually the letter indicating the most common immediate-constant format.

For each machine architecture, the `config/machine/machine.h' file defines additional constraints. These constraints are used by the compiler itself for instruction generation, as well as for asm statements; therefore, some of the constraints are not particularly interesting for asm. The constraints are defined through these macros:

REG_CLASS_FROM_LETTER
Register class constraints (usually lower case).

CONST_OK_FOR_LETTER_P
Immediate constant constraints, for non-floating point constants of word size or smaller precision (usually upper case).

CONST_DOUBLE_OK_FOR_LETTER_P
Immediate constant constraints, for all floating point constants and for constants of greater than word size precision (usually upper case).

EXTRA_CONSTRAINT
Special cases of registers or memory. This macro is not required, and is only defined for some machines.

Inspecting these macro definitions in the compiler source for your machine is the best way to be certain you have the right constraints. However, here is a summary of the machine-dependent constraints available on some particular machines.

ARM family---`arm.h'
f
Floating-point register

F
One of the floating-point constants 0.0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 or 10.0

G
Floating-point constant that would satisfy the constraint `F' if it were negated

I
Integer that is valid as an immediate operand in a data processing instruction. That is, an integer in the range 0 to 255 rotated by a multiple of 2

J
Integer in the range -4095 to 4095

K
Integer that satisfies constraint `I' when inverted (ones complement)

L
Integer that satisfies constraint `I' when negated (twos complement)

M
Integer in the range 0 to 32

Q
A memory reference where the exact address is in a single register (``m'' is preferable for asm statements)

R
An item in the constant pool

S
A symbol in the text segment of the current file

AMD 29000 family---`a29k.h'
l
Local register 0

b
Byte Pointer (`BP') register

q
`Q' register

h
Special purpose register

A
First accumulator register

a
Other accumulator register

f
Floating point register

I
Constant greater than 0, less than 0x100

J
Constant greater than 0, less than 0x10000

K
Constant whose high 24 bits are on (1)

L
16-bit constant whose high 8 bits are on (1)

M
32-bit constant whose high 16 bits are on (1)

N
32-bit negative constant that fits in 8 bits

O
The constant 0x80000000 or, on the 29050, any 32-bit constant whose low 16 bits are 0.

P
16-bit negative constant that fits in 8 bits

G
H
A floating point constant (in asm statements, use the machine independent `E' or `F' instead)

AVR family---`avr.h'
l
Registers from r0 to r15

a
Registers from r16 to r23

d
Registers from r16 to r31

w
Registers from r24 to r31. These registers can be used in `adiw' command

e
Pointer register (r26--r31)

b
Base pointer register (r28--r31)

q
Stack pointer register (SPH:SPL)

t
Temporary register r0

x
Register pair X (r27:r26)

y
Register pair Y (r29:r28)

z
Register pair Z (r31:r30)

I
Constant greater than -1, less than 64

J
Constant greater than -64, less than 1

K
Constant integer 2

L
Constant integer 0

M
Constant that fits in 8 bits

N
Constant integer -1

O
Constant integer 8, 16, or 24

P
Constant integer 1

G
A floating point constant 0.0

IBM RS6000---`rs6000.h'
b
Address base register

f
Floating point register

h
`MQ', `CTR', or `LINK' register

q
`MQ' register

c
`CTR' register

l
`LINK' register

x
`CR' register (condition register) number 0

y
`CR' register (condition register)

z
`FPMEM' stack memory for FPR-GPR transfers

I
Signed 16-bit constant

J
Unsigned 16-bit constant shifted left 16 bits (use `L' instead for SImode constants)

K
Unsigned 16-bit constant

L
Signed 16-bit constant shifted left 16 bits

M
Constant larger than 31

N
Exact power of 2

O
Zero

P
Constant whose negation is a signed 16-bit constant

G
Floating point constant that can be loaded into a register with one instruction per word

Q
Memory operand that is an offset from a register (`m' is preferable for asm statements)

R
AIX TOC entry

S
Constant suitable as a 64-bit mask operand

T
Constant suitable as a 32-bit mask operand

U
System V Release 4 small data area reference

Intel 386---`i386.h'
q
`a', b, c, or d register for the i386. For x86-64 it is equivalent to `r' class. (for 8-bit instructions that do not use upper halves)

Q
`a', b, c, or d register. (for 8-bit instructions, that do use upper halves)

R
Legacy register--equivalent to r class in i386 mode. (for non-8-bit registers used together with 8-bit upper halves in a single instruction)

A
Specifies the `a' or `d' registers. This is primarily useful for 64-bit integer values (when in 32-bit mode) intended to be returned with the `d' register holding the most significant bits and the `a' register holding the least significant bits.

f
Floating point register

t
First (top of stack) floating point register

u
Second floating point register

a
`a' register

b
`b' register

c
`c' register

d
`d' register

D
`di' register

S
`si' register

x
`xmm' SSE register

y
MMX register

I
Constant in range 0 to 31 (for 32-bit shifts)

J
Constant in range 0 to 63 (for 64-bit shifts)

K
`0xff'

L
`0xffff'

M
0, 1, 2, or 3 (shifts for lea instruction)

N
Constant in range 0 to 255 (for out instruction)

Z
Constant in range 0 to 0xffffffff or symbolic reference known to fit specified range. (for using immediates in zero extending 32-bit to 64-bit x86-64 instructions)

e
Constant in range -2147483648 to 2147483647 or symbolic reference known to fit specified range. (for using immediates in 64-bit x86-64 instructions)

G
Standard 80387 floating point constant

Intel 960---`i960.h'
f
Floating point register (fp0 to fp3)

l
Local register (r0 to r15)

b
Global register (g0 to g15)

d
Any local or global register

I
Integers from 0 to 31

J
0

K
Integers from -31 to 0

G
Floating point 0

H
Floating point 1

MIPS---`mips.h'
d
General-purpose integer register

f
Floating-point register (if available)

h
`Hi' register

l
`Lo' register

x
`Hi' or `Lo' register

y
General-purpose integer register

z
Floating-point status register

I
Signed 16-bit constant (for arithmetic instructions)

J
Zero

K
Zero-extended 16-bit constant (for logic instructions)

L
Constant with low 16 bits zero (can be loaded with lui)

M
32-bit constant which requires two instructions to load (a constant which is not `I', `K', or `L')

N
Negative 16-bit constant

O
Exact power of two

P
Positive 16-bit constant

G
Floating point zero

Q
Memory reference that can be loaded with more than one instruction (`m' is preferable for asm statements)

R
Memory reference that can be loaded with one instruction (`m' is preferable for asm statements)

S
Memory reference in external OSF/rose PIC format (`m' is preferable for asm statements)

Motorola 680x0---`m68k.h'
a
Address register

d
Data register

f
68881 floating-point register, if available

x
Sun FPA (floating-point) register, if available

y
First 16 Sun FPA registers, if available

I
Integer in the range 1 to 8

J
16-bit signed number

K
Signed number whose magnitude is greater than 0x80

L
Integer in the range -8 to -1

M
Signed number whose magnitude is greater than 0x100

G
Floating point constant that is not a 68881 constant

H
Floating point constant that can be used by Sun FPA

Motorola 68HC11 & 68HC12 families---`m68hc11.h'
a
Register 'a'

b
Register 'b'

d
Register 'd'

q
An 8-bit register

t
Temporary soft register _.tmp

u
A soft register _.d1 to _.d31

w
Stack pointer register

x
Register 'x'

y
Register 'y'

z
Pseudo register 'z' (replaced by 'x' or 'y' at the end)

A
An address register: x, y or z

B
An address register: x or y

D
Register pair (x:d) to form a 32-bit value

L
Constants in the range -65536 to 65535

M
Constants whose 16-bit low part is zero

N
Constant integer 1 or -1

O
Constant integer 16

P
Constants in the range -8 to 2

SPARC---`sparc.h'
f
Floating-point register that can hold 32- or 64-bit values.

e
Floating-point register that can hold 64- or 128-bit values.

I
Signed 13-bit constant

J
Zero

K
32-bit constant with the low 12 bits clear (a constant that can be loaded with the sethi instruction)

L
A constant in the range supported by movcc instructions

M
A constant in the range supported by movrcc instructions

N
Same as `K', except that it verifies that bits that are not in the lower 32-bit range are all zero. Must be used instead of `K' for modes wider than SImode

G
Floating-point zero

H
Signed 13-bit constant, sign-extended to 32 or 64 bits

Q
Floating-point constant whose integral representation can be moved into an integer register using a single sethi instruction

R
Floating-point constant whose integral representation can be moved into an integer register using a single mov instruction

S
Floating-point constant whose integral representation can be moved into an integer register using a high/lo_sum instruction sequence

T
Memory address aligned to an 8-byte boundary

U
Even register

W
Memory address for `e' constraint registers.

TMS320C3x/C4x---`c4x.h'
a
Auxiliary (address) register (ar0-ar7)

b
Stack pointer register (sp)

c
Standard (32-bit) precision integer register

f
Extended (40-bit) precision register (r0-r11)

k
Block count register (bk)

q
Extended (40-bit) precision low register (r0-r7)

t
Extended (40-bit) precision register (r0-r1)

u
Extended (40-bit) precision register (r2-r3)

v
Repeat count register (rc)

x
Index register (ir0-ir1)

y
Status (condition code) register (st)

z
Data page register (dp)

G
Floating-point zero

H
Immediate 16-bit floating-point constant

I
Signed 16-bit constant

J
Signed 8-bit constant

K
Signed 5-bit constant

L
Unsigned 16-bit constant

M
Unsigned 8-bit constant

N
Ones complement of unsigned 16-bit constant

O
High 16-bit constant (32-bit constant with 16 LSBs zero)

Q
Indirect memory reference with signed 8-bit or index register displacement

R
Indirect memory reference with unsigned 5-bit displacement

S
Indirect memory reference with 1 bit or index register displacement

T
Direct memory reference

U
Symbolic address

S/390 and zSeries---`s390.h'
a
Address register (general purpose register except r0)

d
Data register (arbitrary general purpose register)

f
Floating-point register

I
Unsigned 8-bit constant (0--255)

J
Unsigned 12-bit constant (0--4095)

K
Signed 16-bit constant (-32768--32767)

L
Unsigned 16-bit constant (0--65535)

Q
Memory reference without index register

S
Symbolic constant suitable for use with the larl instruction

Xstormy16---`stormy16.h'
a
Register r0.

b
Register r1.

c
Register r2.

d
Register r8.

e
Registers r0 through r7.

t
Registers r0 and r1.

y
The carry register.

z
Registers r8 and r9.

I
A constant between 0 and 3 inclusive.

J
A constant that has exactly one bit set.

K
A constant that has exactly one bit clear.

L
A constant between 0 and 255 inclusive.

M
A constant between -255 and 0 inclusive.

N
A constant between -3 and 0 inclusive.

O
A constant between 1 and 4 inclusive.

P
A constant between -4 and -1 inclusive.

Q
A memory reference that is a stack push.

R
A memory reference that is a stack pop.

S
A memory reference that refers to an constant address of known value.

T
The register indicated by Rx (not implemented yet).

U
A constant that is not between 2 and 15 inclusive.

Xtensa---`xtensa.h'