[LLVMdev] Surprising SCEV / Constant folding result

[Jonas Wagner]

Hello,

I've tested LLVM's ScalarEvolution analysis with different small examples.
Here's a result that surprised me:

void dont_optimize_away(int);

void foo(int n) {
  int res = 0;
  for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
    // The kind of things that SCEV can recognize is quite astounding...
    // It wins over gcc for this one.
    //res = res + i*i;

    // Also, the kind of things it can't recognize...
    res = res * i;
  }
  dont_optimize_away(res);
}

// Compile using
$ clang -Wall -std=c99 -O2 -c clang_scev_surprise.c -S -o - -emit-llvm

In this loop, the value res is always zero, yet LLVM does not optimize the
loop away at -O2 (contrary to GCC). Is there a simple explanation for this?

Is this a case that is general enough that we could include it in LLVM? It
looks like something that ScalarEvolution could recognize. Or maybe we
could constant-fold the particular pattern of having res = phi(0, res) as
operand in a multiplication.

Cheers,
Jonas
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