Three related questions:

1) Is there a way to force a function to be always executed at compile time (when it's possible to do so) no matter what context it's called in?

2) Is it possible to specialize a function based on whether or not the parameter that was passed in is a compile time constant?

3) Does any D compiler currently optimize out a conditional branch which _can_ be evaluated at compile time (but which isn't forced into CTFE)? Like:

int getValue(bool b)
{
    return b ? 123 : 456;
}

//...
   auto value = getValue(true);

> 1) Is there a way to force a function to be always executed at compile time (when it's possible to do so) no matter what context it's called in?

No, but you could wrap it in a template to force it to always
execute at compile time. Of course it could then only be called
at compile time.

> 2) Is it possible to specialize a function based on whether or not the parameter that was passed in is a compile time constant?

No.

> 3) Does any D compiler currently optimize out a conditional branch which _can_ be evaluated at compile time (but which isn't forced into CTFE)? Like:
>
> int getValue(bool b)
> {
>     return b ? 123 : 456;
> }
>
> //...
>    auto value = getValue(true);

DMD, LDC and GDC all do this when compiling with optimizations
turned on. They all compile these functions to exactly the
same code:

auto foo()
{
    return getValue(true);
}

auto bar()
{
    return 123;
}

On 06/10/2012 09:04 AM, Tommi wrote:
> Three related questions:
>
> 1) Is there a way to force a function to be always executed at compile
> time (when it's possible to do so) no matter what context it's called in?
>

No there is not. You could use a template that calls a private function at compile time instead. What is your use case?

> 2) Is it possible to specialize a function based on whether or not the
> parameter that was passed in is a compile time constant?
>

This has been discussed before, but there is not.


1-2) could be introduced later when D gets AST macros.

> 3) Does any D compiler currently optimize out a conditional branch which
> _can_ be evaluated at compile time (but which isn't forced into CTFE)?
> Like:
>
> int getValue(bool b)
> {
>      return b ? 123 : 456;
> }
>
> //...
>     auto value = getValue(true);

Yes, DMD/GDC/LDC should be able to do this to different extents.

On Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 10:23:09 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> No there is not. You could use a template that calls a private function at compile time instead. What is your use case?

I was just thinking about a situation where a property accessor/mutator methods are not as simple as read/assign value, such as in this silly example:

struct Flipping123
{
    private int m_number = 123;

    @property bool isPositive()
    {
        return m_number >= 0;
    }

    @property void isPositive(bool b)
    {
        m_number = b ? 123 : -123;
    }
}

//...
    Flipping123 fl;
    fl.isPositive = false; // I'd rather not have cond. branching in release mode

On Sunday, 10 June 2012 at 10:16:23 UTC, jerro wrote:
>
> No, but you could wrap it in a template to force it to always
> execute at compile time.

So, I just realized, I could have just this one convenience template that I can use whenever I want to force an expression to be evaluated at compile-time. Like so:

template ct(alias expr)
{
     enum ct = expr;
}

int fun(int a, int b)
{
     return a + b;
}

//... and use it like:

ct!(fun(1, 2))

That's not *too* inconvenient. Although, best would be a function attribute that would force the compiler to apply ctfe aggressively whenever it can with calls to that function.

Tommi:

> 2) Is it possible to specialize a function based on whether or not the parameter that was passed in is a compile time constant?

I am interested in this since some years. I think it's useful, but I don't know if it can be implemented. I don't remember people discussing about this much.

Bye,
bearophile

On 2012-09-27 15:01, bearophile wrote:
> Tommi:
>
>> 2) Is it possible to specialize a function based on whether or not the
>> parameter that was passed in is a compile time constant?
>
> I am interested in this since some years. I think it's useful, but I
> don't know if it can be implemented. I don't remember people discussing
> about this much.

There's the if (__ctfe) hack. Also using only template parameters will force the function to be CTFE.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

Jacob Carlborg:

>> I am interested in this since some years. I think it's useful, but I don't know if it can be implemented. I don't remember
>> people discussing about this much.
>
> There's the if (__ctfe) hack. Also using only template parameters will force the function to be CTFE.

This is quite far from what I was discussing about here...

Bye,
bearophile

One use case I can think of for specializing functions based on whether or not its arguments are compile-time evaluable:

// Big container that can't be accessed in constant time:
immutable cachedResults = init();

double getResult(<args>)
    if (areCompileTimeConstants!(<args>) == false)
{
    return cachedResults.at(<args>);
}

double getResult(<args>)
    if (areCompileTimeConstants!(<args>) == true)
{
    // Computing the result takes long time
    ...
    return computedResult;
}

Point being that A) cachedResults takes so much memory we don't want to evaluate it at compile-time and bloat the executable, and B) accessing cachedResults takes some non-trivial time, so we don't want to do that at runtime if it can be done at compile-time. Don't know how common this kind of thing would be though.


But, that made me think...
In a perfect world, I think, the compiler would always evaluate all possible functions at compile-time, given that doing so would produce a smaller (or equal size) executable than what not-evaluating-at-compile-time would produce. For example (assuming the following initialization functions are compile-time evaluable):

// The following wouldn't be evaluated at compile time,
// because that function call (probably) wouldn't take
// as much space in the executable as million ints:

int[1_000_000] bigArray = initBigArray();

// The following would be always evaluated at compile time,
// because a single int value would take less space in the
// executable than the function call:

int myValue = initMyValue();

Although, to speed up test compilations, we'd need a compiler flag to disable this "aggressive" CTFE behaviour.

On Friday, 28 September 2012 at 17:52:55 UTC, Tommi wrote:
> In a perfect world, I think, the compiler would always evaluate all possible functions at compile-time, given that doing so would produce a smaller (or equal size) executable than what not-evaluating-at-compile-time would produce.


Or, a simpler rule (for both the compiler and the coder):
Have a compiler flag where you set a value (in bytes), and if a function returns a type that's size is not larger than the set value, the compiler would execute all calls to that function at compile-time (if possible).