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Algorithmic and code efficiency (data need only be encoded once and branch table code is usually compact), and the potential to attain high data compression ratios. For example, when compressing country names to country codes, a string such as "Central African Republic" can be compressed to a single index, resulting in large savings ...
An indirect branch (also known as a computed jump, indirect jump and register-indirect jump) is a type of program control instruction present in some machine language instruction sets. Rather than specifying the address of the next instruction to execute , as in a direct branch , the argument specifies where the address is located.
Historically, branch prediction took statistics, and used the result to optimize code. A programmer would compile a test version of a program, and run it with test data. The test code counted how the branches were actually taken. The statistics from the test code were then used by the compiler to optimize the branches of released code.
Switch statements come in two main variants: a structured switch, as in Pascal, which takes exactly one branch, and an unstructured switch, as in C, which functions as a type of goto. The main reasons for using a switch include improving clarity, by reducing otherwise repetitive coding, and (if the heuristics permit) also offering the potential ...
Child branches are branches that have a parent; a branch without a parent is referred to as the trunk or the mainline. [1] The trunk is also sometimes loosely referred to as HEAD, but properly head refers not to a branch, but to the most recent commit on a given branch, and both the trunk and each named branch has its own head.
In computer architecture, a delay slot is an instruction slot being executed without the effects of a preceding instruction. [1] The most common form is a single arbitrary instruction located immediately after a branch instruction on a RISC or DSP architecture; this instruction will execute even if the preceding branch is taken.
Self-modifying code can involve overwriting existing instructions or generating new code at run time and transferring control to that code. Self-modification can be used as an alternative to the method of "flag setting" and conditional program branching, used primarily to reduce the number of times a condition needs to be tested.
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 .