GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) Internals: Condition Code

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### 18.15 Condition Code Status

Condition codes in GCC are represented as registers, which provides better schedulability for architectures that do have a condition code register, but on which most instructions do not affect it. The latter category includes most RISC machines.

Implicit clobbering would pose a strong restriction on the placement of the definition and use of the condition code. In the past the definition and use were always adjacent. However, recent changes to support trapping arithmetic may result in the definition and user being in different blocks. Thus, there may be a `NOTE_INSN_BASIC_BLOCK` between them. Additionally, the definition may be the source of exception handling edges.

These restrictions can prevent important optimizations on some machines. For example, on the IBM RS/6000, there is a delay for taken branches unless the condition code register is set three instructions earlier than the conditional branch. The instruction scheduler cannot perform this optimization if it is not permitted to separate the definition and use of the condition code register.

If there is a specific condition code register in the machine, use a hard register. If the condition code or comparison result can be placed in any general register, or if there are multiple condition registers, use a pseudo register. Registers used to store the condition code value will usually have a mode that is in class `MODE_CC`.

Alternatively, you can use `BImode` if the comparison operator is specified already in the compare instruction. In this case, you are not interested in most macros in this section.

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