On Sunday, 12 August 2018 at 00:15:37 UTC, Cecil Ward wrote:
Paul, what would the calls look like?
I am about to misunderstand things completely so here goes :-)
It would be a bit kludgy having to switch from one calling
syntax to another, putting the mask argument in the template
parameters or in the normal position. Or have I misunderstood?
And if the caller did not use the right call syntax variant
then the optimisation would not happen. Thing is, as it is the
details are nicely hidden and the caller does not even need to
thing about the fact that an (eponymous) template is being used.
As far as I know, there's no way to *guarantee* the optimization
and keep the normal function call syntax. Probably the best you
can do is write the mask check as a regular if statement, put
`pragma(inline, true)` in the function, and hope the optimizer is
smart enough to get rid of the branch.
