[Joker_vD]

> break each instruction into a function call

With values falling into just the right registers magically?

> each single-instruction function

So the RET is also implicit?

Well, in this case taking a non-minimal function and replacing its body with function calls to single-instruction functions would indeed reduce (or leave the same) the code size because some instructions are probably repeated, and now this duplication will be removed. What's the contradiction?

[timeforcomputer]

In the article he says "Now, let's say you split the function in two parts and you find their minimums independently", so I am trying to think of what that means. I was thinking something like splitting "func() { ins1; ins2; }" into "ins1func() { ins1; } ins2func() { ins2; } func() { ins1func(); ins2func() }", but I agree this is an unwieldy/unrealistic example, all the register context would need to be passed in, stack memory addressing etc., and this changes instruction counts non-trivially.

So I guess I don't need to think too much of the functionness of splitting up a code-block, I suppose this example contradiction would also apply and more cleanly if just thinking of the compiler considering blocks of code individually e.g. in a greedy algorithm.

(Actually reading the intro again I think I overcomplicated this and he actually does mean just splitting into code blocks. My mistake)