[llvm-dev] Manipulating DAGs in TableGen

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos via llvm-dev]

I included the ability to get/set an operand by name because I thought it would be easier to copy+modify an existing DAG by specifying the name of the operand you want to replace rather than having to remember its position. For example, if you want to replace the first source, isn't it easier to specify $src than remember it's the second operand?

Perhaps the people actually coding these DAGs have it all down in their minds by position anyway.

At 10/12/2020 12:40 PM, Nicolai Hähnle wrote:
>Hi Paul,
>
>On Sun, Oct 11, 2020 at 4:55 PM Paul C. Anagnostopoulos via llvm-dev
><llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> This is a proposal to enhance TableGen's ability to analyze and manipulate
>> DAGs. Hopefully this will allows more complex DAGs to be built in TableGen.
>>
>> 1. Add a new value suffix.
>>
>>    value(index)
>>
>>    The value must be a DAG. The index specifies the operator or an operand,
>>    whose value is produced. The index can be
>>
>>    0            produce the operator
>>    1...n        produce operand by position
>
>This seems reasonable.
>
>
>>    $name        produce operator/operand by its variable name
>>    string       produce operator/operand by a string containing its
>>                 variable name
>
>I don't like this part, because to me is seems to conflate what the
>indices vs. name operands in DAGs are for. We can often think of DAG
>operators as functions, and the operands are arguments of the
>function. So using a numeric index would return an argument of a given
>index. However, the $names are _not_ names of function arguments! They
>are a mechanism for tagging DAG nodes that are interesting as part of
>pattern matching.
>
>So please don't add this functionality, and definitely don't add it in
>this way. If there is a convincing reason for extracting DAG nodes by
>name, then it should be done via a different ! accessor that performs
>a deep search of the DAG (i.e., it can produce DAG nodes inside
>arbitrarily deeply nested children).

------------------------------------

Agreed.

>>    If the item does not exist, ? (uninitialized) is produced.
>
>I think it would be better for this to fail instead (i.e., not fold
>and produce an error at final resolution). Especially since you
>propose !getdag below.

----------------------------------------

Agreed.

>> 2. Add the !getdag() bang operator.
>>
>>    !getdag(dag, index [, default])
>>
>>    This bang operator produces the same result as the (...) suffix.
>>    However, the default value can be specified as the third argument.
>>    If it is not specified, ? is used.
>
>As above, I would suggest having to specify ? explicitly.