28-Feb-2013 21:09, Steven Schveighoffer пишет:
On Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:43:06 -0500, Walter Bright
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 2/28/2013 6:59 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
On 2/28/13 2:37 AM, deadalnix wrote:
I don't see how defining a specific sentinel range here helps.
On first blush I agree. It may as well be a range that by convention is
sentinel-terminated, and there's calls to front and popFront but
never to empty.
Consider the following code from lexer.c:
p++;
switch (*p)
Written using an InputRange:
popFront();
switch (front)
That code is INVALID. This is why a SentinelInputRange is necessary.
You can't just use an InputRange in an invalid manner by convention.
Does switch(*p) include a case for 0? If so, wouldn't it be equivalent
to say if(empty) /* do stuff that case 0 does */ else switch(front)
-Steve
No as a compiler will take it (or may depending on its brain) that 0 is
what you want to test *first*. It may speed things up if branch is
almost always taken but its not the case with sentinel. Thus its jsut
dead code that needs to be decoded, evalutated and skipped (as
predicated) *before* doing switch jump.
In fact some people avoid the overhead of switch by placing one or two
of highly-frequent branches with tests before the switch (thus avoiding
indirect branch it entails in these frequent cases).
--
Dmitry Olshansky
