Repeating

Loops can be created inside blocks using the .repeat() and .repeat_until(..) methods.

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

let repeat_endless = main_hir.repeat();

// run until the condition is true
let repeat_until = main_hir.repeat_until(expr);
}

To avoid namespace collissions in Rust, there is no while construct but you can simply create it via .repeat_until(LV2Expr::from(..).not()). The optimizer makes sure that no instruction overhead is generated.

Inside repeat blocks you are free to use .break_repeat() and .continue_repeat() to precisely control the flow. As in every programming language, Break terminates the loop while Continue jumps to its start again.

The .repeat_iterating(collection, item) constructor is able to consecutively assign every entity to the variable passed as item as long as the collection value supports iteration. Check the Iterators chapter if you want to find out more about this.

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
// repeat for all items in an iterator, assign item to variable `i`
let repeat_iterating = main_hir.repeat_iterating(lv2_list!(1, 2, 3), lv2_var!(i));

// ... and this is the elaborate variant
let it = lv2_list!(1, 2, 3).to_iter();
let repeat_iterating = main_hir.repeat_iterating(it, lv2_var!(i));
}

Example

We want to print the odd numbers between 0 and 10. This is an unbeautified implementation in pythonic pseudocode.

i = 0
while True:
    if i == 10:
        break
    i += 1
    if i % 2 == 0:
        continue
    print(i)

Translating it into a LV2Function one by one could look like this:

#![allow(unused)]
fn main() {
use lovm2::prelude::LV2Expr;
let i = &lv2_var!(i);

// i = 0
main_hir.assign(i, 0);

let repeat = main_hir.repeat();

// if i == 10: break
repeat
    .branch()
    .add_condition(LV2Expr::from(i).eq(10))
    .break_repeat();

// i += 1
repeat.increment(i);

// if i % 2 == 0: continue
repeat
    .branch()
    .add_condition(LV2Expr::from(i).rem(2).eq(0))
    .continue_repeat();

// print(i)
repeat.step(lv2_call!(print, i, "\n"));
}

You can imagine that the resulting LIR is a lot more elaborate than the previous examples so we will only focus on the essential parts. From a intermediate perspective an endless loop is implemented by appending an unconditional jump to the loops body.

main:
.repeat_start:
    ...
	Jump(.repeat_start)
.repeat_end:

To terminate the loop once the counter variable reaches 10, we add a conditional break to the body. This is solely a jump targeting the loops end label.

.cond_start:
	Push(i)
	CPush(10)
	Operator2(Equal)
	JumpIfFalse(.cond_end)
	Jump(.repeat_end)
.cond_end:

On the other hand Continue targets the start label.