Insn Canonicalizations - GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals
Description: GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals

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### 16.14 Canonicalization of Instructions

There are often cases where multiple RTL expressions could represent an operation performed by a single machine instruction. This situation is most commonly encountered with logical, branch, and multiply-accumulate instructions. In such cases, the compiler attempts to convert these multiple RTL expressions into a single canonical form to reduce the number of insn patterns required.

In addition to algebraic simplifications, following canonicalizations are performed:

- For commutative and comparison operators, a constant is always made the second operand. If a machine only supports a constant as the second operand, only patterns that match a constant in the second operand need be supplied.
- For associative operators, a sequence of operators will always chain to the left; for instance, only the left operand of an integer `plus` can itself be a `plus`. `and`, `ior`, `xor`, `plus`, `mult`, `smin`, `smax`, `umin`, and `umax` are associative when applied to integers, and sometimes to floating-point.
- For these operators, if only one operand is a `neg`, `not`, `mult`, `plus`, or `minus` expression, it will be the first operand.
- In combinations of `neg`, `mult`, `plus`, and `minus`, the `neg` operations (if any) will be moved inside the operations as far as possible. For instance, `(neg (mult A B))` is canonicalized as `(mult (neg A) B)`, but `(plus (mult (neg B) C) A)` is canonicalized as `(minus A (mult B C))`.

- For the `compare` operator, a constant is always the second operand if the first argument is a condition code register or `(cc0)`.
- An operand of `neg`, `not`, `mult`, `plus`, or `minus` is made the first operand under the same conditions as above.
- `(ltu (plus` a b`)` b`)` is converted to `(ltu (plus` a b`)` a`)`. Likewise with `geu` instead of `ltu`.
- `(minus` x`(const_int` n`))` is converted to `(plus` x`(const_int` -n`))`.
- Within address computations (i.e., inside `mem`), a left shift is converted into the appropriate multiplication by a power of two.

- De Morgan's Law is used to move bitwise negation inside a bitwise logical-and or logical-or operation. If this results in only one operand being a `not` expression, it will be the first one.

  A machine that has an instruction that performs a bitwise logical-and of one operand with the bitwise negation of the other should specify the pattern for that instruction as

                (define_insn ""
                  [(set (match_operand:m 0 ...)
                        (and:m (not:m (match_operand:m 1 ...))
                                     (match_operand:m 2 ...)))]
                  "..."
                  "...")

  Similarly, a pattern for a “NAND” instruction should be written

                (define_insn ""
                  [(set (match_operand:m 0 ...)
                        (ior:m (not:m (match_operand:m 1 ...))
                                     (not:m (match_operand:m 2 ...))))]
                  "..."
                  "...")

  In both cases, it is not necessary to include patterns for the many logically equivalent RTL expressions.

- The only possible RTL expressions involving both bitwise exclusive-or and bitwise negation are `(xor:` m x y`)` and `(not:` m`(xor:` m x y`))`.
- The sum of three items, one of which is a constant, will only appear in the form

                (plus:m (plus:m x y) constant)

- Equality comparisons of a group of bits (usually a single bit) with zero will be written using `zero_extract` rather than the equivalent `and` or `sign_extract` operations.

Further canonicalization rules are defined in the function `commutative_operand_precedence` in `gcc/rtlanal.c`.