Branching

While working on your functions hir, you can call the .branch() method to create a point of conditional execution. A branch can have several conditions with associated blocks and at most one default condition that is always met. Branches with just a default_condition are not allowed.

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
let main_hir = builder.entry();

// ...

let equal_check = main_hir.branch();

equal_check
    .add_condition(expr)
    .step(...);

equal_check
    .default_condition()
    .step(...);
}

Expression Branches

Regular branches are considered statements and do not leave values on stack as such. However, there is a special expression variant LV2Expr::branch() that lets you create the adhoc version of a ternary operator.

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
// f(n) = n == 2 ? "a" : "b"

let n = lv2_var!(n);
let f_body = LV2Expr::branch().add_condition(LV2Expr::from(n).eq(2), "a").default_value("b");

builder
    .add_with_args("f", vec![n])
    .return_value(f_body);
}

Note: LV2ExprBranch must always return a value meaning that you have to call the default_value method at least once. Otherwise the compiler will complain that a structure of type LV2ExprBranchIncomplete cannot be converted into an expression. This is a compile time check to ensure that those branches always evaluate to a value.

Example

Let's implement a function that returns 1 if the given value is equal to 2 and 0 otherwise. From a Rust perspective, we could generate the function like this:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
let main = builder.add_with_args("is_2", vec![n.clone()]);
let branch = main.branch();

branch
    .add_condition(LV2Expr::from(n).eq(2))
    .return_value(1);

branch
    .default_condition()
    .return_value(0);
}

The representation will be translated temporarily to the following optimized LIR. As you can see, a lot of labels (prefixed with a .) got involved right now. Everything between .cond_0's start and end label is derived from our first conditions predicate and body. The JumpIfFalse instruction separates them by making sure that the body will be skipped if the expression evaluates to false. As usual, whenever we hit a return instruction, the function will terminate assuring that we will not fall through into our default branch.

is_2:
	Store(n)
.branch_start:
.cond_start:
	Push(n)
	CPush(2)
	Operator2(Equal)
	JumpIfFalse(.cond_end)
	CPush(1)
	Ret
.cond_end:
	CPush(0)
	Ret

In the last lowering step, there are only two things left to do: resolving label offsets and patching them into the jump instructions.