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A study of a C function inliner
Author(s) -
Davidson Jack W.,
Holler Anne M.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380180805
Subject(s) - executable , programmer , compiler , computer science , programming language , set (abstract data type) , function (biology) , filter (signal processing) , evolutionary biology , computer vision , biology
Although the inline expansion of subprograms has often been cited as a method for improving a program's execution time, few available compilers perform the operation, and fewer still perform it without requiring explicit direction from the programmer. The authors have written a tool called INLINER, which is a source‐to‐source filter that automatically performs inline expansion of C functions in a module. With this tool, the effect of inlining was investigated using a set of programs on several machines. The authors' findings are presented, including an instance (unrelated to the size of the inlined executable) in which inlining can diminish a program's performance, and evidence that the size of the inlined executable does not, in practice, prove to cause problems.