At 10:51 AM 10/3/2001 -0400, Bryan C. Warnock wrote:
>Is there anything that might alter an operation involving only constants
>and/or the constant registers at a time other than compile time (ie, when
>the opcode is generated.)?
For integer, string, and float constants (i.e. I, N, and S regs) no. For
PMC constants, yes. It's possible that someone might change the behaviour
of the String class, or the Integer class. (Yanking Ruby into the mix here)
Whether constant folding can be done is an issue for the compiler and
optimizer, though. Once things get to the interpreter they're pretty much
fixed.
Having said that, if you're looking to add optimizations into the
assembler, you're probably OK, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort at
the moment.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
