register dancing
Many older processor architectures suffer from a serious shortage of
general-purpose registers. This is especially a problem for compiler-writers,
because their generated code needs places to store temporaries for things like
intermediate values in expression evaluation. Some designs with this problem,
like the Intel 80x86, do have a handful of special-purpose registers that can be
pressed into service, providing suitable care is taken to avoid unpleasant side
effects on the state of the processor: while the special-purpose register is
being used to hold an intermediate value, a delicate minuet is required in which
the previous value of the register is saved and then restored just before the
official function (and value) of the special-purpose register is again needed.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
register « register allocation « register assignment
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register dancing » registered port » register
set » register spilling
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