Re: [c++, cxx-reflection] Initial thoughts on type reflection.

[Phil Edwards <phil at jaj dot com>]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 06:32:09AM +0100, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> 
> There is a category of built-ins called BUILT_IN_FRONTEND, which are
> expanded by the front-ends.  In our case we don't want RTL, still we

Right.  I went with BUILT_IN_NORMAL for this reason.


> want them to me marked BUILT_IN_FRONT_END.  Our built-ins will be
> expanded by the front-end (into a tree or GIMPLE or whatever it gets
> called by the time we merge).

Actually...  I think this is somewhat moot, since none of the builtin
functions can take types as arguments.  Which leaves two options:

1)  Add __builtin_* expressions to the parsers.  One already exists, in
    the form of __builtin_va_arg.  That isn't handled by the BUILT_IN_*
    tags at all:

    /* Expand __builtin_va_arg, which is not really a builtin function, but
       a very special sort of operator.  */

    So, going that route sort of obviates any BUILT_IN_* stuff as far as
    I can tell; the "operators" are handled specially.

2)  Do something else.  My implementations have all gone this route, and
    pay a small price in readability.


> The invariant here is that, the ressult
> of the expansion is still something that conceptually happens at the code
> source level.

Absolutely.  If you can convince people that changing expand_builtin to not
return rtx is a good idea, that'd be great.


Phil

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