by using the "ir" constraint (immediate or register) and the carefully
constructed instruction addu $2,$0,%2 which can take either an
immediate or a register for %2, the new inline asm admits maximal
optimization with no register spillage to the stack when the compiler
successfully performs constant propagration, but still works by
allocating a register when the syscall number cannot be recognized as
a constant. in the case of syscalls with 0-3 arguments it barely
matters, but for 4-argument syscalls, using an immediate for the
syscall number avoids creating a stack frame for the syscall wrapper
function.
Rich Felker