docs: Add FAQ about "storing to a virtual register".

This came up for the N+1'st time today in IRC.

git-svn-id: https://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm/trunk@171155 91177308-0d34-0410-b5e6-96231b3b80d8
This commit is contained in:
Sean Silva 2012-12-27 10:23:04 +00:00
parent 6fa16e192f
commit bdb0c0aaf3

View File

@ -53,6 +53,29 @@ Some porting problems may exist in the following areas:
like the Bourne Shell and sed. Porting to systems without these tools like the Bourne Shell and sed. Porting to systems without these tools
(MacOS 9, Plan 9) will require more effort. (MacOS 9, Plan 9) will require more effort.
What API do I use to store a value to one of the virtual registers in LLVM IR's SSA representation?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In short: you can't. It's actually kind of a silly question once you grok
what's going on. Basically, in code like:
.. code-block:: llvm
%result = add i32 %foo, %bar
, ``%result`` is just a name given to the ``Value`` of the ``add``
instruction. In other words, ``%result`` *is* the add instruction. The
"assignment" doesn't explicitly "store" anything to any "virtual register";
the "``=``" is more like the mathematical sense of equality.
Longer explanation: In order to generate a textual representation of the
IR, some kind of name has to be given to each instruction so that other
instructions can textually reference it. However, the isomorphic in-memory
representation that you manipulate from C++ has no such restriction since
instructions can simply keep pointers to any other ``Value``'s that they
reference. In fact, the names of dummy numbered temporaries like ``%1`` are
not explicitly represented in the in-memory representation at all (see
``Value::getName()``).
Build Problems Build Problems
============== ==============