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This commit removes the `field_call_bind` and `field_call_bind_named` ZIR
instructions, replacing them with a `field_call` instruction which does the bind
and call in one.
`field_call_bind` is an unfortunate instruction. It's tied into one very
specific usage pattern - its result can only be used as a callee. This means
that it creates a value of a "pseudo-type" of sorts, `bound_fn` - this type used
to exist in Zig, but now we just hide it from the user and have AstGen ensure
it's only used in one way. This is quite silly - `Type` and `Value` should, as
much as possible, reflect real Zig types and values.
It makes sense to instead encode the `a.b()` syntax as its own ZIR instruction,
so that's what we do here. This commit introduces a new instruction,
`field_call`. It's like `call`, but rather than a callee ref, it contains a ref
to the object pointer (`&a` in `a.b()`) and the string field name (`b`). This
eliminates `bound_fn` from the language, and slightly decreases the size of
generated ZIR - stats below.
This commit does remove a few usages which used to be allowed:
- `@field(a, "b")()`
- `@call(.auto, a.b, .{})`
- `@call(.auto, @field(a, "b"), .{})`
These forms used to work just like `a.b()`, but are no longer allowed. I believe
this is the correct choice for a few reasons:
- `a.b()` is a purely *syntactic* form; for instance, `(a.b)()` is not valid.
This means it is *not* inconsistent to not allow it in these cases; the
special case here isn't "a field access as a callee", but rather this exact
syntactic form.
- The second argument to `@call` looks much more visually distinct from the
callee in standard call syntax. To me, this makes it seem strange for that
argument to not work like a normal expression in this context.
- A more practical argument: it's confusing! `@field` and `@call` are used in
very different contexts to standard function calls: the former normally hints
at some comptime machinery, and the latter that you want more precise control
over parts of a function call. In these contexts, you don't want implicit
arguments adding extra confusion: you want to be very explicit about what
you're doing.
Lastly, some stats. I mentioned before that this change slightly reduces the
size of ZIR - this is due to two instructions (`field_call_bind` then `call`)
being replaced with one (`field_call`). Here are some numbers:
+--------------+----------+----------+--------+
| File | Before | After | Change |
+--------------+----------+----------+--------+
| Sema.zig | 4.72M | 4.53M | -4% |
| AstGen.zig | 1.52M | 1.48M | -3% |
| hash_map.zig | 283.9K | 276.2K | -3% |
| math.zig | 312.6K | 305.3K | -2% |
+--------------+----------+----------+--------+
|
||
|---|---|---|
| .. | ||
| crc | ||
| adler.zig | ||
| auto_hash.zig | ||
| benchmark.zig | ||
| cityhash.zig | ||
| crc.zig | ||
| fnv.zig | ||
| murmur.zig | ||
| wyhash.zig | ||
| xxhash.zig | ||