[LLVMdev] Question about local variables

[Nick Lewycky]

Ryan Taylor wrote:
> Nick,
>
>    Also, I forgot to mention I had no luck with instnamer, it still left
> the local variables as "%slotNum", it didn't name them, unless I used
> -instnamer wrong:
>
> opt -instnamer <file.bc> file2.bc

Almost, use -o to specify output: opt -instnamer file.bc -o file2.bc

> Those are the ones I am refering to. The description for instnamer says that it names unnamed instructions (not operands), or am I confused on the terminology here?

Ah, I see. The operand of an instruction is some other Value, but it's 
not a subclass of Value like Instruction is. Allow me to elaborate.

Here's some example IR:

   declare i32 @test(i32 %arg) {
     %A = add i32 %arg, 1
     %B = mul i32 %A, 2
     ret i32 %B
   }

The llvm::Value hierarchy contains Instruction, Argument and Constant 
(among others). The operands of %A are "i32 %arg" and "i32 1" where %arg 
is an Argument and 1 is a Constant.

So, saying that "but it doesn't name operands" is moot, because it goes 
through and names all the arguments and instructions, which means that 
it's going to name all the operands -- except for constants.

Firstly, constants (like "i32 1") aren't allowed to have names. 
Secondly, some Constants (GlobalValues which includes functions and 
global variables) are allowed to have names, but the instnamer won't 
touch them.

> For example, if I print out I->getName I get "add" not "x" or "y", but when I do Value *V = I->getOperands(loop) and then do V->getName, then it prints out the name of the operand. Am I going about this backwards? It sounds like it from the terminology you are using (calling an operand an instruction).

If you have the Instruction* for "%A", then getName() will return "A", 
not "add". It may be the case that you have "%add = add i32 %arg, 1" in 
which case it would return "add". :)

If you call %A->getOperand(0) then you'll get the Value* whose getName() 
returns "arg", and also you can cast pointer to Argument*.

> I don't mean to be contentious (as I really appreciate your time and help) but apparently someone does use it, me. When going from source to source it's needed to keep track of the variables. Or am I missing something here too?

Sure, no problem! I'm happy to explain how LLVM works.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you're going source-to-source 
through LLVM. Are you taking a language (say C++) compiling it to LLVM 
IR, then trying to produce another language back out (say Javascript)? I 
would give up on trying to map the output variable names back to the 
input ones. Think of LLVM IR like you would x86 assembly, that 
information is long gone.

If you mean that you're doing LLVM IR -> LLVM IR, then instead of names 
use the Value pointers directly. Like names, they refer to the values.

Nick

>
> ?
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 12:51 PM, Nick Lewycky <nicholas at mxc.ca
> <mailto:nicholas at mxc.ca>> wrote:
>
>     Ryan Taylor wrote:
>
>         Nick,
>
>             Unfortunately this doesn't answer my question I don't think. It
>         seems that -instnamer, as you mention, names the instructions
>         but still
>         does not name the local variables.
>
>
>     What other local variables are you referring to? When AsmWriter
>     prints "%y = add i32 %x, 1", the name of that add instruction is "y"
>     and "x" is the name of another instruction or argument. If it has no
>     name, the AsmWriter emits a number ("%0"), by counting from the top.
>     The only other locals could be function arguments, and instnamer
>     names those too.
>
>
>             So there really is no way to do this shy of creating (or
>         basically
>         copying) the API from AsmWriter (seems very dedundant to me)?
>         This seems
>         like a large failing?
>
>
>     Correct, you'd have to copy that logic.
>
>     It's not a large failing because nobody uses names of non-globals
>     for anything. When we want to refer to a value, we use the Value*.
>
>     Nick
>
>
>         On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 7:03 PM, Nick Lewycky <nicholas at mxc.ca
>         <mailto:nicholas at mxc.ca>
>         <mailto:nicholas at mxc.ca <mailto:nicholas at mxc.ca>>> wrote:
>
>             Ryan Taylor wrote:
>
>                 It looks like the AsmWriter is generating the local
>         variables
>                 (SlotNum)s
>                 on the fly in that file (AsmWriter.cpp), so is there any
>         way at
>                 all to
>                 get this information from the operation itself, via
>         Instruction,
>                 Value
>                 or Type?
>
>
>             Nope! As you noticed, they're created on the fly...
>
>             ...when the Value or Type is anonymous. If you want them to be
>             persistent, values can have names via. the setName() call. "opt
>             -instnamer" will name all your instructions, for example.
>
>             Nick
>
>
>
>