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From: ark@alice.UucP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: net.arch
Subject: Re: Right shift vs. divide
Message-ID: <4797@alice.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 12-Jan-86 01:24:51 EST
Article-I.D.: alice.4797
Posted: Sun Jan 12 01:24:51 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 12-Jan-86 12:59:43 EST
References: <996@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
Lines: 9

> Also, (3) sometimes you know that the dividend is divisible by the power
> of two you are dividing it by.  And (4), a conditional add followed by a
> shift is equivalent to a divide, and is often much faster.  Finally, (5),
> if you regard the number as a fraction, with the decimal point at the left,
> what happens to the low order bit is of no great consequence.

To which I add (6): sometimes you don't care if a division rounds
up or down, as long as it delivers one of the neighbors of the
exact result.  Consider a binary search.