[PATCH] Optimize x*x*x*x*x*x using 3 multiplications.

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Roger Sayle <roger@eyesopen.com> writes:

Just to make sure I understand what you're acheiving.

| One piece of ugliness is that we now have to disable the constant folding
| transformation of pow(x,2) into x*x. 

People have been recently suggesting to forward calls to pow() in the
hope that it would, for example, expand pow(x, 2) into x * x.  What
are the reasons for nto doing that?

| Clearly, if GCC's constant folding
| transforms both ways calling fold on the result, we'll end up with
| unbounded recursion.

Clearly.

-- Gaby