Say I had this snippet of code:
#include
// ...
float f = rand();
std::cout << sin(f) << \" \" << sin(f);
As
Using g++ built with default optimization flags:
float f = rand();
40117e: e8 75 01 00 00 call 4012f8 <_rand>
401183: 89 44 24 1c mov %eax,0x1c(%esp)
401187: db 44 24 1c fildl 0x1c(%esp)
40118b: d9 5c 24 2c fstps 0x2c(%esp)
std::cout << sin(f) << " " << sin(f);
40118f: d9 44 24 2c flds 0x2c(%esp)
401193: dd 1c 24 fstpl (%esp)
401196: e8 65 01 00 00 call 401300 <_sin> <----- 1st call
40119b: dd 5c 24 10 fstpl 0x10(%esp)
40119f: d9 44 24 2c flds 0x2c(%esp)
4011a3: dd 1c 24 fstpl (%esp)
4011a6: e8 55 01 00 00 call 401300 <_sin> <----- 2nd call
4011ab: dd 5c 24 04 fstpl 0x4(%esp)
4011af: c7 04 24 e8 60 40 00 movl $0x4060e8,(%esp)
Built with -O2
:
float f = rand();
4011af: e8 24 01 00 00 call 4012d8 <_rand>
4011b4: 89 44 24 1c mov %eax,0x1c(%esp)
4011b8: db 44 24 1c fildl 0x1c(%esp)
std::cout << sin(f) << " " << sin(f);
4011bc: dd 1c 24 fstpl (%esp)
4011bf: e8 1c 01 00 00 call 4012e0 <_sin> <----- 1 call
From this we can see that without optimizations the compiler uses 2 calls and just 1 with optimizations, empirically I guess, we can say the compiler does optimize the call.
I'm fairly certain GCC marks sin
with the non-standard pure attribute, ie __attribute__ ((pure));
This has the following effect:
Many functions have no effects except the return value and their return value depends only on the parameters and/or global variables. Such a function can be subject to common subexpression elimination and loop optimization just as an arithmetic operator would be.
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Function-Attributes.html
And so there is a very good chance that such pure calls will be optimized with common subexpression elimination.
(update: actually cmath is using constexpr, which implies the same optimizations)