[adrian_b]

The code generated by gcc in this case is just bad.

It is known that gcc fails to do "if conversion" in many cases when it should.

The correct code using the CMOV instruction and only a single computation of the expression could easily be written with inline assembly.

However, if inline assembly is used, there is a much simpler solution using the carry flag, which was presented at the end of the article that started this thread.

In reality, all the high level language solutions that have been listed in the article are very bad in comparison with the right solution using inline assembly.

The solution using inline assembly and the carry flag is actually applicable to any CPU, with the minor inconvenient that the mnemonics for the instructions could vary (which can be handled with defined macros), because all have carry flags and on all CPUs this solution will be the shortest and the fastest.

For the high-level solutions, which is the best of them can vary from CPU to CPU, which was my point.

[ghusbands]

And I'll reiterate the original point, the pointer-operations (with comparison) solution is not going to be the best in most any case; you admit that it's not the fastest for inline assembly, which you claim is the right solution. It's not going to vary from CPU to CPU - comparisons in most compilers will become branches and cause a stall and the best case (cmov) is still going to be slower than a shift-from-carry or the (a&b)+(a^b)/2 version.

We don't need to admit defeat in optimizing such a simple case. A comparison is unnecessary and will pessimize, compared to a little bit-manipulation.