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DCE is too general.

Tree-shaking is specifically the form of DCE where you remove unreferenced functions/modules.

Especially important is that you can do tree-shaking without analyzing control flow, while by default "DCE" implies you're analyzing control flow.

And I don't think tree-shaking is a misnomer. Depending on how you visualize the metaphor, unreferenced functions are either barely attached or not attached. Shaking them off is simple and sufficiently realistic.



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