Instr-case
Case macro for the different kinds of instr structures.
This is an ACL2::fty sum-type case macro,
typically introduced by fty::defflexsum or fty::deftagsum. It
allows you to safely check the type of a instr structure, or to split
into cases based on its type.
Short Form
In its short form, instr-case allows you to safely check the type of
a instr structure. For example:
(instr-case x :op-imm)
is essentially just a safer alternative to writing:
(equal (instr-kind x) :op-imm)
Why is using instr-case safer? When we directly inspect the
kind with equal, there is no static checking being done to
ensure that, e.g., :op-imm is a valid kind of instr structure. That means there is nothing to save you
if, later, you change the kind keyword for this type from :op-imm to something else. It also means you get no help
if you just make a typo when writing the :op-imm
symbol. Over the course of developing VL, we found that such
issues were very frequent sources of errors!
Long Form
In its longer form, instr-case allows you to split into cases based
on the kind of structure you are looking at. A typical example would be:
(instr-case x
:op-imm ...
:op-imms32 ...
:op-imms64 ...
:op-imm-32 ...
:op-imms-32 ...
:lui ...
:auipc ...
:op ...
:op-32 ...
:jal ...
:jalr ...
:branch ...
:load ...
:store ...)
It is also possible to consolidate ``uninteresting'' cases using
:otherwise.
For convenience, the case macro automatically binds the fields of x for
you, as appropriate for each case. That is, in the :op-imm case,
you can use fty::defprod-style foo.bar style accessors for x
without having to explicitly add a op-imm b*
binder.
