Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!winchester!mash
From: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Re: a style question
Message-ID: <41898@mips.mips.COM>
Date: 3 Oct 90 19:22:16 GMT
References: <1990Oct2.151644.1581@phri.nyu.edu> <1300002@hp-ptp.HP.COM> <2572@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>
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Reply-To: mash@mips.COM (John Mashey)
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In article <2572@lectroid.sw.stratus.com> dswartz@bigbootay.sw.stratus.com (Dan Swartzendruber) writes:
>Can you say "nitpicking over whether to do == or < is silly micro-level
>optimization which can't even be relied on to behave the same from one
>machine to the next"?  I knew you could!

At the code level, this is probably true, although it certainly is the
case that there are fundamental computer system design reasons why
== might be faster than <.  Whether these reasons show up in any
given computer architecture is another issue, but certainly, if you care,
the == or != tests are likely to be equal or faster on many machines,
or equal on others, but seldom slower.
It probably doesn't matter most places, except in some technical code
with short loops with many iterations.
-- 
-john mashey	DISCLAIMER: <generic disclaimer, I speak for me only, etc>
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