module constant values

[Jamison Hope <jrh at theptrgroup dot com>]

Hello,

While looking at some compiler output the other day, I noticed that
if a module defines a constant like

> (define-constant FOO ::int 42)

that the compiled class file contains

> Field name: FOO public static final Signature: int
> Attribute "ConstantValue", length:2, value: Integer 42

but then it also has in <clinit>

>  10: bipush 42
>  12: putstatic <Field some_module.FOO int>

which seems unnecessary to me. If I put
  public static final int FOO = 42;
in a Java source file, the compiled bytecode will have a field with
ConstantValue attribute and that's all.


I discovered that I can suppress the putstatic by adding something like

for (Attribute attr = decl.field.getAttributes(); attr != null;
     attr = attr.getNext())
{
  if (attr instanceof ConstantValueAttr)
    return;
}

near the top of BindingInitializer#emit(), but it's not clear to me
whether that's the right place to make a change. Perhaps the
BindingInitializer shouldn't be created in the first place if the
Declaration's field has had a ConstantValue set. But this happens in
SetExp#compile(), which has

        if (decl.shouldEarlyInit())
          BindingInitializer.create(decl, new_value, comp);

and Declaration#shouldEarlyInit() seems written specifically so that
for constants it will return true.

Am I missing something? What's the rationale for initializing the
value of a field that already has its value hard-coded?

Thanks,
Jamie

--
Jamison Hope
The PTR Group
www.theptrgroup.com