I think gcc should allow the programmer to tell it something about a function return value even if the function is inlined and the compiler can see all the code. Consider the code below.
If NOINLINE is defined the compiler will call g once. No need to do anything after the h() call since the function is marked const. If NOINLINE is not defined and the compiler sees the asm statement it will expand the function body twice. Don't worry about the content of the asm, this is correct in the case I care about. What I expect is that gcc still respects that the function is marked const and performs the same optimization as in the case when the function is not inlined. Is there anything I miss how to achieve this? I don't think so in which case, do people agree that this should be changed? extern int **g(void) __attribute__((const, nothrow)); #ifndef NOINLINE extern inline int ** __attribute__((always_inline, const, nothrow, gnu_inline, artificial)) g(void) { int **p; asm ("call g@plt" : "=a" (p)); return p; } #endif #define pr(c) ((*g())[c] & 0x80) extern void h(void); int f(const char *s) { int c = 0; for (int i = 0; i < 20; ++i) c |= pr(s[i]); h(); for (int i = 20; i < 40; ++i) c |= pr(s[i]); return c; }