Talk:Constant folding

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The below article appears to be more correct, so I'm moving it here.

Constant folding is the optimization done by compilers in early stage of the compilation of a program. In C it is the optimization that makes it possible to have constant expressions in array-declarations, like:

#define WIDTH 320
#define HEIGHT 240

char buffer[WIDTH*HEIGHT];

Constant folding is similar to constant propagation, however constant folding must be done before the high-level language is translated to three-address-code to make code like above work. Constant propagation is done on the three-address-code (preferably on SSA form)

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