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The branch table construction is commonly used when programming in assembly language but may also be generated by compilers, especially when implementing optimized switch statements whose values are densely packed together.
The kinds of control flow statements supported by different languages vary, but can be categorized by their effect: Continuation at a different statement (unconditional branch or jump) Executing a set of statements only if some condition is met (choice - i.e., conditional branch)
Unconditional branch instructions such as GOTO are used to unconditionally jump to a different instruction sequence. If the algorithm requires a conditional branch, the GOTO (or GOSUB subroutine call) is preceded by an IF-THEN statement specifying the condition(s).
Conditional branching statements allow a sequence of statements to be executed only if some condition is met. Otherwise, the statements are skipped and the execution sequence continues from the statement following them. Unconditional branching statements allow an execution sequence to be transferred to another part of a program.
For ordered data this translates to a performance loss compared to a predictable branch. [4] Predication is most effective when paths are balanced or when the longest path is the most frequently executed, [3] but determining such a path is very difficult at compile time, even in the presence of profiling information.
The target of a conditional or an unconditional goto/jump instruction is a leader. The instruction that immediately follows a conditional or an unconditional goto/jump instruction is a leader. Starting from a leader, the set of all following instructions until and not including the next leader is the basic block corresponding to the starting ...
Here's the simplest C example I can think of (which uses effectively the second CONDFUNC1 definition above) - here branching_f is ordinary branching code (with an if statement, that only works on a conventional computer, and branchless_f is the equivalent code, which produces the same result, but has no if or other branching instruction (the ...
Multiway branch is the change to a program's control flow based upon a value matching a selected criteria. It is a form of conditional statement . A multiway branch is often the most efficient method of passing control to one of a set of program labels , especially if an index has been created beforehand from the raw data .