Refactoring Terminology – What is This Type of Refactoring Called?

refactoringterminology

I am sure there is a term for the following bit of refactoring, but I can't remember it and my Google-fu is failing me!

The refactor moves if statements to where they are going to have most impact, for example changing this

$test = someFunctionThatReturnsABool();
for($x = 0; $x < 10000; $x++) {
    if ($test) { 
        echo $x; 
    }
}

To this

$test = someFunctionThatReturnsABool();
if ($test) {
    for($x = 0; $x < 10000; $x++) {
        echo $x; 
    }
}

Best Answer

This is loop-invariant code motion. A good compiler should do it on its own.

...loop-invariant code consists of statements or expressions (in an imperative programming language) which can be moved outside the body of a loop without affecting the semantics of the program. Loop-invariant code motion (also called hoisting or scalar promotion) is a compiler optimization which performs this movement automatically...

If we consider the following code sample, two optimizations can be easily applied.

for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    x = y + z;
    a[i] = 6 * i + x * x;
}

The calculation x = y + z and x * x can be moved outside the loop since within they are loop invariant — they do not change over the iterations of the loop— so the optimized code will be something like this:

x = y + z;
t1 = x * x;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
    a[i] = 6 * i + t1;
}

This code can be optimized further...

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