A term I had to look up was "SSA", which it turns out is short for "single static assignment". [1] This is where a variable in the intermediate representation c

A term I had to look up was "SSA", which it turns out is short for "single static assignment". [1] This is where a variable in the intermediate representation can only be assigned to once, and this has to be at the point of definition. It seems that a single variable in the original C++ can (/must) be translated into multiple SSA variables in the IR, representing its value after each assignment to it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_single_assignment_form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_single_assignment_form