------- Comment #7 from rguenth at gcc dot gnu dot org 2006-01-13 18:42 ------- Looking at how we deal with all this, we seem to like pow() very much during folding, even doing the reverse transformations you suggest. The transformation back to sqrt ( x**N ) with N being an integer could be done by expand_builtin_pow in case that computation of sqrt is cheap. Other than that, exposing integer powers is only a win if theres some CSE possibility.
-- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25620
