What does PHI node mean? [GCC Internals Manual]

[Ian Lance Taylor]

"Dennis, CHENG Renquan" <crquan@fedoraproject.org> writes:

> And what does IPA mean ? 3 initial letter of "Inter Procedual A..." ?
> What does 'A' stand for?
>
>   /* Interprocedural optimization passes.  */
>   p = &all_small_ipa_passes;

IPA => interprocedural analysis.

It's approximately the same thing as interprocedural optimization.  The
distinction is that historically gcc separated some of the tasks.  E.g.,
when the ipa-inline pass was introduced, it did not actually do any
inlining; instead, it decided which functions should be inlined, and the
actual inlining was done later.  That separation is no longer as clean
as it was, but the name persists.

Ian