Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!fluke!ssc-vax!lee
From: lee@ssc-vax.UUCP (Lee Carver)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C IF statement efficiency...
Summary: muddying the waters
Message-ID: <1131@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
Date: 18 Aug 88 17:43:42 GMT
References: <8808171400.AA05122@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Organization: Boeing Aerospace Corp., Seattle WA
Lines: 18

In article <8808171400.AA05122@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>, U23405@UICVM writes:
| I was wondering if, of the two following program fragments, which one would
| be compiled more efficiently by most C compilers:
| 
|           if (big > small)             if (big > small)
|                return big;                  return big;
|           else                         return small;
|                return small;
| 
| In other words, does a compiler handle IF statements with RETURNs more or less
| efficiently than IF..ELSE statements with RETURNs (or with other statements
| besides RETURN, for that matter) ?

Just to muddy the waters, for this application you can use

	return ( big > small ? big : small )

But, maybe you have a real body of code to execute?