Register allocation in the presence of pointers

worley@compass.com (Dale Worley)
Thu, 22 Feb 90 10:44:07 EST

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Register allocation in the presence of pointers worley@compass.com (1990-02-22)
Re: Register allocation in the presence of pointers jac@paul.rutgers.edu (1990-02-22)
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Date: Thu, 22 Feb 90 10:44:07 EST
From: worley@compass.com (Dale Worley)

Mohd Hanafiah b. Abdullah writes:
> How does one perform register allocation on scalar variables that may
> be pointed to by others?


The usual strategy is to never leave the value of the variable in a register,
since it may be fetched or modified at any time via the pointer. On some
hardware, registers have addresses and this conservative strategy may not be
needed. A more interesting approach would be to analyze which parts of the
program might reference the variable through a pointer and which can not --
then you know in which parts of the program you have to leave the value in its
"official" location and in which parts you can leave the variable in a
register. This requires serious global data-flow analysis, which, although
possible, is rarely implemented.


Dale Worley Compass, Inc. worley@compass.com





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