Node specialization for a statically typed language?

[Chris Seaton]

Yes you can just use AddLong and AddDouble nodes directly. There’s no point to specialisation if you don’t need it. You’ll probably find you do want specialisation for other things - particularly C function pointer calls and C++ virtual calls. There’s an opportunity to beat native compiled C++ there because you can specialise for the concrete classes actually seen at a call site.

Chris

> On 27 Jul 2016, at 13:28, Gerard Krol <gerard at gerardkrol.nl> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> With Cover[1] I'm implementing C/C++, which is statically typed. Currently
> I'm using a single Add node, like SimpleLanguage does, with specializations
> for long and double. Performance is fine, but I'm wondering if this is the
> optimal way. I find I need to add quite a lot of guards to steer Truffle
> towards the correct specialization. There is some info about specialization
> in the Truffle FAQ, but it seems to be geared towards dynamic languages.
> 
> Can't I just emit AddLong and AddDouble nodes? I think it would make the
> code a lot clearer, and save me from debugging code that picks the wrong
> specialization. If the parameters to the node are not correct during parse
> time I can just add a cast node in between.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Gerard
> 
> [1] https://github.com/gerard-/cover