register spilling

<programming, compiler>

(By analogy with spilling the contents of an overfull container) When a compiler is performing the register allocation phase of generating machine code and there are more live variables than the machine has registers and it has to transfer or "spill" some variables from registers to memory.

Last updated: 2014-08-02

Nearby terms:

register set ♦ register spilling ♦ Register Transfer Language ♦ registry

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