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.NH 1
Common subexpression elimination
.NH 2
Introduction
.PP
The Common Subexpression Elimination optimization technique (CS)
tries to eliminate multiple computations of EM expressions
that yield the same result.
It places the result of one such computation
in a temporary variable,
and replaces the other computations by a reference
to this temporary variable.
The primary goal of this technique is to decrease
the execution time of the program,
but in general it will save space too.
.PP
As an example of the application of Common Subexpression Elimination,
consider the piece of program in Fig. 7.1(a).
.DS
x := a * b;          TMP := a * b;       x := a * b;
CODE;                x := TMP;           CODE
y := c + a * b;      CODE                y := x;
                     y := c + TMP;

   (a)                  (b)                 (c)

Fig. 7.1  Examples of Common Subexpression Elimination
.DE
If neither a nor b is changed in CODE,
the instructions can be replaced by those of Fig. 7.1(b),
which saves one multiplication,
but costs an extra store instruction.
If the value of x is not changed in CODE either,
the instructions can be replaced by those of Fig. 7.1(c).
In this case
the extra store is not needed.
.PP
In the following sections we will describe
which transformations are done
by CS and how this phase
was implemented.