Re: Bypass virtual function call when calling direcltly with a object/reference of that type?

From:
Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Tue, 16 Nov 2010 08:06:34 CST
Message-ID:
<buooc9psm9x.fsf@dhlpc061.dev.necel.com>
Jamboree <tongari95@gmail.com> writes:

tuple<A, B, C> t;
t.get<0>().f() // f is declared as a virtual function, but we know it's

A::f definitely.

I just want to ask if I could make sure that the compiler will call
A::f without the virtual mechanism.
Though I think it really depends on the compiler implementation, but I
think modern compilers, especially Clang, should have ability to
figure that out.


gcc (4.5/4.6) seems to do that optimization in many cases[*], but
clang (2.8) doesn't when I tried it. Clang doesn't seem to support
c++0x / std::tuple out of the box, but even with std::pair or a simple
structure field, clang 2.8 always seems do an indirect call through
the virtual table (maybe there's an extra option or something you
need, I dunno).

[*] gcc 4.5 generates direct calls for members of std::pair or with a
    field member, but not for elements of std::tuple; gcc 4.6 can do
    it on std::tuple in some cases too.

Here's a table summarizing the results for the attached source file,
with "DIRECT" meaning "uses a direct jump to the actual function", and
"vcall" meaning "calls through the virtual table." "-" means "didn't
compile" (as clang 2.8 doesn't seem to support c++0x / std::tuple, at
least by default).

                       gcc-4.5 gcc-4.6 clang-2.8
--------------------------------------------------------
arg_tuple_test vcall vcall -
local_tuple_test vcall DIRECT -
extern_tuple_test vcall DIRECT -
arg_pair_test DIRECT DIRECT vcall
local_pair_test DIRECT DIRECT vcall
extern_pair_test DIRECT DIRECT vcall
arg_member_test DIRECT DIRECT vcall
local_member_test DIRECT DIRECT vcall
extern_member_test DIRECT DIRECT vcall

Compiler arguments used:
   gcc-4.5: -DUSE_TUPLE -std=c++0x -O2 -march=native -S
   gcc-4.6: -DUSE_TUPLE -std=c++0x -O2 -march=native -S
   clang-2.8: -O2 -march=native -S

-Miles

Here's the source file, "x.cc":

---- start ----
#ifdef USE_TUPLE
#include <tuple>
#endif

#include <utility>

struct A
{
  virtual void f () const;
};

struct X
{
  A a;
};

#ifdef USE_TUPLE
void arg_tuple_test (const std::tuple<A> &t)
{
  std::get<0>(t).f ();
}

void local_tuple_test ()
{
  const std::tuple<A> t;
  std::get<0>(t).f ();
}

void extern_tuple_test ()
{
  extern const std::tuple<A> t;
  std::get<0>(t).f ();
}
#endif

void arg_pair_test (const std::pair<A,A> &t)
{
  t.first.f ();
}

void local_pair_test ()
{
  const std::pair<A,A> t;
  t.first.f ();
}

void extern_pair_test ()
{
  extern const std::pair<A,A> t;
  t.first.f ();
}

void arg_member_test (const X &t)
{
  t.a.f ();
}

void local_member_test ()
{
  X t;
  t.a.f ();
}

void extern_member_test ()
{
  extern const X t;
  t.a.f ();
}
---- end ----

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