I think a blind search before/after experiment that looks at preprocessor
runtime would be good for this. It's easy to accidentally introduce copying by
forgetting a "&" in a loop, for example.
If I were working on this, I'd do a complete before/after translator +
preprocessor run and compare if the preprocessed results remain the same. With a
single core on a desktop PC (i.e., without the grid), this should take a few
hours at most, especially if you only run the translator once. (I've done this
frequently recently when working on translator bugs.)
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