I agree that you should write the clearest HLL code possible. At the local college I work with ASM students and sometimes we play "beat the compiler". With the right example, even a beginning student can do this vs the highest optimization level. This example would not be a good one because if (not $cell) ... and $cell || ... will code every similarly even with a "dumb" compiler. They are essentially the same. Load from memory, ALU operation to set flags, jump on flags that were just set. The ALU operation could be a or eax,eax(nothing but set flags) or  neg eax (negate and set flags). Different kind of jump instruction required but timing is the same. I wouldn't worry about this at all.

A bigger mistake in source coding is to assume that shorter source code maybe with a bunch of fancy maps, joins, and other functions is faster than longer code that is more straightforward. You can write one line in HLL that takes a lot more work at the low level that something else that takes many HLL lines.

In reply to Re^4: next unless condition by Marshall
in thread next unless condition by hankcoder

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