[cfe-dev] Adding constant optimizations to Clang AST

[John McCall]

On Feb 6, 2013, at 2:23 PM, David Blaikie <dblaikie at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 2:18 PM, dmanatunga <manatunga at gmail.com> wrote:
>> David Blaikie wrote
>>> Why? LLVM optimizations will already do the right thing with this sort of
>>> code.
>> 
>> It is for an assignment that has been given to me. The Professor wants it
>> done it for the Clang AST as opposed to the llvm IR.
>> 
>> David Blaikie wrote
>>> Are you trying to transform the user's code for them? (ie: do you
>>> expect to modify the original source files or otherwise give this
>>> source back to the user in some form) Or just produce better binaries?
>> 
>> I am not modifying the original source file, or expect to give the source
>> back to the user in some form. Just producing a better binary. I understand
>> Clang tries to retain as much of the original code specification in the AST
>> as possible, but I am basically ignoring that.
> 
> In short: the AST is not designed to be mutated so this may not be an
> easy task. I don't really have any particularly useful pointers on how
> you might achieve it.

A TreeTransform would be the ridiculously expensive way of doing it.

BinaryOperator will let you see the LHS and RHS expressions, and
reassociation doesn't really disrupt any particularly serious invariants
for IR-generation, so for an assignment, this isn't too evil.  It is, of
course, absolutely not how we would approach this problem for real.

John.