Another way (How not to write a loop)

Carl Lowenstein cdl at mplvax.nosc.MIL
Fri Feb 19 14:11:42 AEST 1988


In article <2150 at bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi at bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
>
>Floating point numbers should not be used for counting except when such
>use gains us a remarkable degree of badly-needed efficiency.  
>
>     count -=1;		/* integer arithmetic with software test */
>     if (count == 0)
>	abort_program;

This is inefficient?  I would hope that any decent compiler could turn
these lines into the something like (usual case one instruction):

			/ integer arithmetic with hardware test
	ISZ	COUNT	/ PDP-8 instruction, but even CISC's like
	JMP	ABORT	/  IBM 7090's and later have an equivalent

-- 
	carl lowenstein		marine physical lab	u.c. san diego
	{ihnp4|decvax|ucbvax}	!sdcsvax!mplvax!cdl



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