GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals

12.4 RTL Template

The RTL template is used to define which insns match the particular pattern and how to find their operands. For named patterns, the RTL template also says how to construct an insn from specified operands.

Construction involves substituting specified operands into a copy of the template. Matching involves determining the values that serve as the operands in the insn being matched. Both of these activities are controlled by special expression types that direct matching and substitution of the operands.

(match_operand:m n predicate constraint)

This expression is a placeholder for operand number n of the insn. When constructing an insn, operand number n will be substituted at this point. When matching an insn, whatever appears at this position in the insn will be taken as operand number n; but it must satisfy predicate or this instruction pattern will not match at all.

Operand numbers must be chosen consecutively counting from zero in each instruction pattern. There may be only one match_operand expression in the pattern for each operand number. Usually operands are numbered in the order of appearance in match_operand expressions. In the case of a define_expand, any operand numbers used only in match_dup expressions have higher values than all other operand numbers.

predicate is a string that is the name of a function that accepts two arguments, an expression and a machine mode. See Predicates. During matching, the function will be called with the putative operand as the expression and m as the mode argument (if m is not specified, VOIDmode will be used, which normally causes predicate to accept any mode). If it returns zero, this instruction pattern fails to match. predicate may be an empty string; then it means no test is to be done on the operand, so anything which occurs in this position is valid.

Most of the time, predicate will reject modes other than m—but not always. For example, the predicate address_operand uses m as the mode of memory ref that the address should be valid for. Many predicates accept const_int nodes even though their mode is VOIDmode.

constraint controls reloading and the choice of the best register class to use for a value, as explained later (see Constraints). If the constraint would be an empty string, it can be omitted.

People are often unclear on the difference between the constraint and the predicate. The predicate helps decide whether a given insn matches the pattern. The constraint plays no role in this decision; instead, it controls various decisions in the case of an insn which does match.

(match_scratch:m n constraint)

This expression is also a placeholder for operand number n and indicates that operand must be a scratch or reg expression.

When matching patterns, this is equivalent to

          (match_operand:m n "scratch_operand" pred)
     

but, when generating RTL, it produces a (scratch:m) expression.

If the last few expressions in a parallel are clobber expressions whose operands are either a hard register or match_scratch, the combiner can add or delete them when necessary. See Side Effects.

(match_dup n)

This expression is also a placeholder for operand number n. It is used when the operand needs to appear more than once in the insn.

In construction, match_dup acts just like match_operand: the operand is substituted into the insn being constructed. But in matching, match_dup behaves differently. It assumes that operand number n has already been determined by a match_operand appearing earlier in the recognition template, and it matches only an identical-looking expression.

Note that match_dup should not be used to tell the compiler that a particular register is being used for two operands (example: add that adds one register to another; the second register is both an input operand and the output operand). Use a matching constraint (see Simple Constraints) for those. match_dup is for the cases where one operand is used in two places in the template, such as an instruction that computes both a quotient and a remainder, where the opcode takes two input operands but the RTL template has to refer to each of those twice; once for the quotient pattern and once for the remainder pattern.

(match_operator:m n predicate [operands...])

This pattern is a kind of placeholder for a variable RTL expression code.

When constructing an insn, it stands for an RTL expression whose expression code is taken from that of operand n, and whose operands are constructed from the patterns operands.

When matching an expression, it matches an expression if the function predicate returns nonzero on that expression and the patterns operands match the operands of the expression.

Suppose that the function commutative_operator is defined as follows, to match any expression whose operator is one of the commutative arithmetic operators of RTL and whose mode is mode:

          int
          commutative_integer_operator (x, mode)
               rtx x;
               enum machine_mode mode;
          {
            enum rtx_code code = GET_CODE (x);
            if (GET_MODE (x) != mode)
              return 0;
            return (GET_RTX_CLASS (code) == RTX_COMM_ARITH
                    || code == EQ || code == NE);
          }
     

Then the following pattern will match any RTL expression consisting of a commutative operator applied to two general operands:

          (match_operator:SI 3 "commutative_operator"
            [(match_operand:SI 1 "general_operand" "g")
             (match_operand:SI 2 "general_operand" "g")])
     

Here the vector [operands...] contains two patterns because the expressions to be matched all contain two operands.

When this pattern does match, the two operands of the commutative operator are recorded as operands 1 and 2 of the insn. (This is done by the two instances of match_operand.) Operand 3 of the insn will be the entire commutative expression: use GET_CODE (operands[3]) to see which commutative operator was used.

The machine mode m of match_operator works like that of match_operand: it is passed as the second argument to the predicate function, and that function is solely responsible for deciding whether the expression to be matched “has” that mode.

When constructing an insn, argument 3 of the gen-function will specify the operation (i.e. the expression code) for the expression to be made. It should be an RTL expression, whose expression code is copied into a new expression whose operands are arguments 1 and 2 of the gen-function. The subexpressions of argument 3 are not used; only its expression code matters.

When match_operator is used in a pattern for matching an insn, it usually best if the operand number of the match_operator is higher than that of the actual operands of the insn. This improves register allocation because the register allocator often looks at operands 1 and 2 of insns to see if it can do register tying.

There is no way to specify constraints in match_operator. The operand of the insn which corresponds to the match_operator never has any constraints because it is never reloaded as a whole. However, if parts of its operands are matched by match_operand patterns, those parts may have constraints of their own.

(match_op_dup:m n[operands...])

Like match_dup, except that it applies to operators instead of operands. When constructing an insn, operand number n will be substituted at this point. But in matching, match_op_dup behaves differently. It assumes that operand number n has already been determined by a match_operator appearing earlier in the recognition template, and it matches only an identical-looking expression.

(match_parallel n predicate [subpat...])

This pattern is a placeholder for an insn that consists of a parallel expression with a variable number of elements. This expression should only appear at the top level of an insn pattern.

When constructing an insn, operand number n will be substituted at this point. When matching an insn, it matches if the body of the insn is a parallel expression with at least as many elements as the vector of subpat expressions in the match_parallel, if each subpat matches the corresponding element of the parallel, and the function predicate returns nonzero on the parallel that is the body of the insn. It is the responsibility of the predicate to validate elements of the parallel beyond those listed in the match_parallel.

A typical use of match_parallel is to match load and store multiple expressions, which can contain a variable number of elements in a parallel. For example,

          (define_insn ""
            [(match_parallel 0 "load_multiple_operation"
               [(set (match_operand:SI 1 "gpc_reg_operand" "=r")
                     (match_operand:SI 2 "memory_operand" "m"))
                (use (reg:SI 179))
                (clobber (reg:SI 179))])]
            ""
            "loadm 0,0,%1,%2")
     

This example comes from a29k.md. The function load_multiple_operation is defined in a29k.c and checks that subsequent elements in the parallel are the same as the set in the pattern, except that they are referencing subsequent registers and memory locations.

An insn that matches this pattern might look like:

          (parallel
           [(set (reg:SI 20) (mem:SI (reg:SI 100)))
            (use (reg:SI 179))
            (clobber (reg:SI 179))
            (set (reg:SI 21)
                 (mem:SI (plus:SI (reg:SI 100)
                                  (const_int 4))))
            (set (reg:SI 22)
                 (mem:SI (plus:SI (reg:SI 100)
                                  (const_int 8))))])
     

(match_par_dup n [subpat...])

Like match_op_dup, but for match_parallel instead of match_operator.