http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=44978
--- Comment #14 from Mikael Morin <mikael at gcc dot gnu.org> ---
(In reply to janus from comment #13)
> > > Well, the advantage of my original patch is obviously that it not only
> > > avoids the double errors, but it also prevents us from doing double the
> > > work
> > > in resolving the symbols, so it might even give a performance improvement
> > > for large codes, in particular with heavy OOP (not sure if it's anywhere
> > > close to being significant, though).
> >
> > All right, the only one solution left that I see is the one making the
> > functions void. See the attached patch (comments welcome).
> > I ran the testsuite partially on it and it was clean, but I don't have the
> > time to finish that right now. It looked as slow as usual by the way. ;-)
>
> Your patch does not compile cleanly, but after a small fix to make it
> compile, the testsuite runs through successfully.
Uh? My trunk is a few weeks old. I guess that's the reason.
> However, I don't quite see the point of doing this: Doesn't a void return
> value have basically the same effect as returning true? (i.e. to "keep
> going", whereas returning false means to "back out", since there was a
> problem)
>
The point is: if the return value is not reliable, let's remove it.
The void is indeed the same as returning true ("keep going"). I think it's
better to "always keep going" rather than "keep going because the function was
already called, even if it returned 'back out' the first time".
> Therefore I don't really see the improvement here. To the contrary: I would
> rather say we should propagate the return values as far as possible (one
> case where it is currently not propagated is resolve_symbol). This alone
> might even get rid of the double errors (if one pulls it through fully), but
> again it does not really help with double resolution in the non-error case,
> so I'd say we still need to rely on sym->resolved.
>
OK, let's use more bool; but then the return value shall be consistent across
multiple calls.
So I would say use two bits for each function: one telling whether the function
was already called on the symbol, and one telling the return value.
There are three functions as far as I know (resolve_symbol, resolve_fl_derived
and resolve_fl_derived0) which makes six bits.
Even if you are concerned about wasted memory, that doesn't consume extra
memory because of fields alignments.
(In reply to Mikael Morin from comment #10)
> > Or can
> > you give an example where it would create a problem?
>
> No, it was more a general design comment. I will try to find one.
I couldn't find one; but my opinion remains the same. I think it's bad design
to return different values across repeated calls.
