"Documentation by paper"

[Daniel Berlin]

On Feb 9, 2004, at 12:53 PM, Jamie Lokier wrote:

> law@redhat.com wrote:
>> In message <20040208062304.GB25666@mail.shareable.org>, Jamie Lokier 
>> writes:
>>> Note that there are several different variations of SSA form,
>>> particularly minimal vs. non-minimal, so a definition of which one is
>>> being used and assumed e.g. by tree-SSA would be good.
>>
>> Minimal vs pruned vs semi-pruned are not properties of the SSA form 
>> -- they
>> only differ in how many useless PHI nodes are initially generated when
>> translating into SSA form.
>
> Granted, but papers do refer to them as "minimal SSA" et al., and the
> properties are relevant to algorithms.  Without being 100% certain
> from memory, I recall some algorithms require some of the "useless"
> PHI nodes to be present.

This is theoretical.
I provided some data that showed at least one algorithm that claimed 
they wanted "useless" phi nodes to be present worked slightly better 
without them.