- ...inline,
- On small pieces of
code, inlining may be counted on to do well, since procedure call
overhead becomes less significant as procedure size increases.
- ...testing.
- Yes, this is where things cross over into AI.
- ...j.
- Note that for the initial mechanism we are proposing,
optimization of a block will proceed on the assumption that if a
condition is true at the beginning of the block, it holds throughout
the block. In this example, this is an entirely safe assumption; were
a to be incremented on each pass through the loop (as if it were
an array pointer), it is conceivable that it might point at i or
j at some point even if it did not upon entering the block
(although in this instance, this would probably be evidence of
terrible pointer mismanagement rather than anything intended by the
programmer.) Thus, programmer caution is in order.