[sdcc-devel] cheapest constant value: Was it worth it?

[Johan K. <joh...@id...>]

Hi,

I received some private emails about this. So I will explain in public.

char c;

if (c<9) {
    whatever;
}

The constant 9 was an int value, so c was casted to an int and an int
compare was done: a waste of code and time. Ok, so what, a couple of bytes
of code and some milliseconds. Hey, what about this:

char c;

for (c=0; c<126; c++) {
    whatever;
}

Every time the condition was checked, c was casted to an int and an int
compare was done: that really was a waste of time.

That doesn't happen anymore. I knew that this would expose/generate bugs.
Most of them have been dealt with now (although there were far more than I
expected: even in label generation, let's not talk about endianess), some
will still exist. I will try to tackle them when they are exposed. In the
mean time sdcc will generate more compact and faster code for all ports.

I hope this satisfies you all,
Johan