[lore] C hacks

David Basden davidb at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
Wed Apr 2 15:47:40 WST 2008


The third line doesn't work, but here is a 'better' version.
Note the lack of conditionals, so none of that pesky branch
prediction when calculating b = max(a,b).

This line at least also compiles cleanly with gcc -Wall -ansi -pedantic
on both IA-32 and AMD-64.

b -= (((b-a)&(((unsigned)-1>>1)^-1))>>(sizeof(-1)*8-1))*(b-a);

David

On Fri, Mar 28, 2008 at 12:50:11AM +0900, David Basden wrote:
> I was thinking that maybe people are just writing C that is either
> too readable, too inefficient or both. Maybe a connect-the-equivilent-
> code puzzle or something?
> 
> Here is just a quick one 'cause I'm beyond tired, but please add to it;
> I don't know if the third works, and might not be a good idea to let out
> in public even if it does...
> 
> while (*a++ == *b++);	 strcpy(b,a);
> 
> a ^= b ^= a;			int tmp = a;
>                                 a = b;
>                                 b = a;
> 
> a >> 1;				a = a / 2;
> 
> b = (((a - b) & (1<<(sizeof(int)-1))) && b) || a; 	if (a > b) b = a;
> 
> a << 3;				a =  a * 8;
> 
> 1 << a;				(int) pow((int) a, 2);
> 
> a & 1;				a % 2;
> 
> a & 7;				a % 8;
> 
> (a & 15) || ++b;		if (a % 16 == 0) 
> 					b = b + 1;
> 
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