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Subject: Re: Simple optimization question

Author: Tom Likens

Date: 07:03:37 01/09/04

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On January 09, 2004 at 06:46:00, Tord Romstad wrote:

>By reading this forum, I've understood that "if" statements are considered
>evil and that it is often a good idea to remove them if it is possible.  Suppose
>that I have code which looks like this:
>
>if(x) y += 20;
>
>Would it then be advantageous to rewrite the code like this?
>
>y += (!(!x))*20;
>
>In my evaluation function, I have a lot of conditionals which could be avoided
>by
>using tricks similar to the one above, but before doing it I would like to make
>sure it is really a good idea.  After all, the first form above is much more
>readable.
>
>Tord

Hello Tord,

I suspect that your second construct will contain at least one branch.  You
might want to
verify that (either yea or nay) by compiling it with the -S switch.  You could
then look
at the actual assembly to see what the compiler is doing.

regards,
--tom

P.S. I think it *must* have gotten very chilly somewhere if Tord Romstad is
considering low-
       level optimizations!! :-)



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