On Thu, May 20, 2004 at 10:18:06AM -0700, Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon wrote:
> Dan Sugalski wrote:
> >   istrue I0, P5        # I0 = 1 if P5 is true
> >   isgt I0, P5, P6      # I0 = i if P5 > P6
> 
> By all means!  I've thought non-branching comparison ops would be a good 
> idea for years...

My goodness. Takes me back to the early 90s Acorn RISC processors, where
every instruction was conditional on the control flags. Could skip half a
dozen instructions with the same false conditional at the same cost as
performing a branch. I doubt if this would be nearly as much of an
optimization for a virtual machine, but an aggressively optimizing compiler
would make constructs like the following just that extra bit faster:

    if ( foo < bar ) baz++;


-- 
Jon Shapcott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"This is the Space Age, and we are Here To Go" - Wlliam S. Burroughs

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