Hewlett-Packard Company

Vineet Soni

Andrew E Ayers

The procedure of the invention eliminates redundant conditional branch statements (CBSs) from a program, wherein the program includes (i) plural blocks of program statements, (ii) a definition statement (DEF) for each variable in the program that assigns a value to each variable, (iii) a defining point (DEFP) which is a first point in the program that a value is calculated, and (iv) plural CBSs. Each CBS transfers control to one of two target blocks of program statements, dependent upon an operation code and controlling variable that form a part of the test associated with the CBS. The procedure associates all DEFs which define a same value, with a DEFP for the same value and determines (i) a controlling variable upon which a test CBS is dependent, (ii) a DEF of the controlling variable of the test CBS and (iii) a DEFP for the DEF of the controlling variable. If a value first calculated at the DEFP found in (iii) is utilized by a CBS, the procedure finds which arm of the CBS reaches the test CBS; and then revises a block of program statements that include the test CBS, to eliminate at least a test required by the test CBS, and replace the conditional branch with an unconditional branch.

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Brighton, MA, United States of America

Vineet Soni