TRANSFORMING ADDRESSING ALIGNMENT DURING CODE GENERATION

The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for changing addressing mode during code generation. Generally, embodiments of the invention use a compiler transformation to transform lower level code from one address alignment to another address alignment. The transformation can be based upon assumptions of a source programming language. Based on the assumptions, the transformation can eliminate arithmetic operations that compensate for different addressing alignment, resulting in more efficient code. Some particular embodiments use a compiler transformation to transform an Intermediate Representation (“IR”) from one-byte addressing alignment into multi-byte (e.g., four-byte) addressing alignment.