[m-dev.] --num-reserved-addresses

[Julien Fischer]

On Sun, 4 Feb 2018, Zoltan Somogyi wrote:

> It controls how many small integers we can use to represent constants
> in grades that do not use primary tags (which in practice means only
> the Java and C# grades).
>
> Would anyone object if I deleted this option?
>
> The default value has long been 0, it is never set automatically to anything
> else, and I don't remember seeing set to anything else manually either.
>
> The advantages from deleting it would be 
>
> - doing so would simplify the code deciding type representations, and
> - we would be able to do away completely with shared_with_reserved_addresses(...)
>  tags. Such tags complicate code generation for unifications and for switches,
>  and the code we generate for them is slower than it would be in the absence
>  of reserved addresses.
>
> The disadvantage is loss of the ability to do so in the future.
>
> Any opinions? Does anyone have any hard data (as opposed to the informed
> guess above) about the performance effects of using such reserved addresses,
> current or historical?

I have no objections to removing the option.

Julien.