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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Re^2: Another silly question
Message-ID: <10165@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 29 Apr 89 02:42:46 GMT
References: <pointer> <array> <reference> <access> <element> <2459@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <10135@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1266@l.cc.purdue.edu> <4625@freja.diku.dk> <10160@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <10160@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>What you should write is simply
>	if ( p2 - p1 < p4 - p3 )

I forgot to say why.  Although this might result in generated code that
does unnecessary work, on the other hand it might not.  Concern for such
low-level "microefficiency" is nearly always misplaced.  If this
particular test occurred in bottleneck code, then it might be worthwhile
to tweak it, but in the vast majority of cases the visually simpler code
is preferable.