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From: keesan@bbncca.ARPA (Morris Keesan)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Superstition in Programmers
Message-ID: <448@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 6-Jan-84 10:38:26 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.448
Posted: Fri Jan  6 10:38:26 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Jan-84 02:18:32 EST
References: <598@dciem.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 13

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    Actually, I don't consider "counting downwards to 0 instead of upwards to
how_many_times" to be superstitious behaviour, as Mark Brader does.  I do this
myself, but I do it on purpose and with the knowledge of why I do it, which is
that on many (most?) machines, a comparison with zero is cheaper than comparison
with other constants -- that is, the machine instruction takes fewer bytes ior
is faster.  Likewise, I will use comparisons like "i < 0" in favor of    
"i == -1" when possible (e.g. checking for error returns from U*IX system calls)
because I know that checking sign is smaller/faster than comparison to constant.
-- 
					Morris M. Keesan
					{decvax,linus,wjh12}!bbncca!keesan
					keesan @ BBN-UNIX.ARPA