On Sunday, 12 August 2018 at 00:55:50 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:
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.
I was thinking about reflection and powerful things like traits.
Would a test to see if a static if compile do the trick ? You ask
the question using traits : "does the following compile? : {
static if ( mask == 3 ) { }; }" - any use?
