[anthonj]

I think this call for something similar to "__builtin_expect" or linux' likely()/unlikely().

Not very clean, but better than inserting obscure optimisations in the source.

[gblargg]

Assuming compilers are smart enough to insert an unnecessary branch to break the dependency.

[vitally3643]

That's what the hints are for. Expect/likely/unlikely are the programmer informing the compiler what it should expect and how it should optimize

[purplesyringa]

That would be great, if only it worked as intended! From the perspective of an optimizing compiler, `a == b ? a : b` is worse than `b` regardless of the probability you assign to `a == b`.

ETA: someone on Lobsters (https://lobste.rs/s/1an425/quadrupling_code_performance_with...) noticed that `[[unlikely]]` actually works on LLVM (not on GCC, and with worse codegen on LLVM, but it's still good to know) -- updated the post.

[MaxBarraclough]

I was wondering the same thing. Also, could profile-guided optimisation help here?