inlining

[superdan]

Don Wrote:

> JAnderson wrote:
> > JAnderson wrote:
> >> bobef wrote:
> >>> This has probably been asked many times before. If someone knows of 
> >>> such discussion please paste me a link. Why not an 'inline' 
> >>> attribute? We all know that the compiler can be stupid some times, 
> >>> and even if it is not people may want to inline something that is 
> >>> normally not appropriate for inlining. Auto inlining is fine, but 
> >>> people should have control over such kind of things I believe.
> >>>
> >>> Regards, bobef
> >>
> >> May C++ compilers ignore the inline attribute because it has a better 
> >> handle on when to inline.  There have been some studies (does anyone 
> >> have the links to these) where they've shown that most of the time the 
> >> compiler can make a more intelligent guess then the average engineer.
> >>
> >> But that's C++.  D does this automatic virtual's thing so its 
> >> difficult to say whether the compiler can always make a good choice.
> >>
> >> -Joel
> > 
> > I was working with MSVC++ the other day and found a couple of places 
> > where it wasn't inlining the code and was running slow.  So I placed a 
> > few inlines around and *bam* that code started running faster.  Then I 
> > profiled the code as a whole to see how much of an improvement I'd 
> > gained.  However the game was actually running slower.  It turned out 
> > that inlining had simply shifted the bottneck into memory and the 
> > program file size had got bigger, so the program cache was stalling all 
> > the time.
> > 
> > I'm not against inlining, I just think that you have to be really 
> > careful when using it and understand its implications (ie use a 
> > profiler), otherwise you could be making things worse.
> > 
> > -Joel
> 
> Yup. Code cache can easily become a bottleneck. Similarly, turning on 
> 'optimise for speed' for a whole program is almost always a bad idea.
> 
> More useful than 'inline', would be some way to tell the compiler 'this 
> function is speed-critical'. If nothing else, it would have some 
> documentation value.

just use the 'super' keyword:

void myfunc() super 
{
}

:)