SLAU132V October 2004 – February 2020
The compiler analyzes the branching behavior of a program and rearranges the linear sequences of operations (basic blocks) to remove branches or redundant conditions. Unreachable code is deleted, branches to branches are bypassed, and conditional branches over unconditional branches are simplified to a single conditional branch.
When the value of a condition is determined at compile time (through copy propagation or other data flow analysis), the compiler can delete a conditional branch. Switch case lists are analyzed in the same way as conditional branches and are sometimes eliminated entirely. Some simple control flow constructs are reduced to conditional instructions, totally eliminating the need for branches.