• BeigeAgenda
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    1 year ago

    I call it making assumptions that may be incorrect, and do you know if the compiler will do the optimization anyway in this case?

    • mryessir@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      What statement do you flag as assumption? Yes, I do. The modulo operator is only a subset of bit masks. It is more explicit to write:

      if ( (variable &EVEN_MASK) == 0) …

      To act upon even numbers then:

      if ( (variable %2) == 0) …

      How would you name the 2 in the above statement for more expressive power?

      EVEN_MODULO_OP ? That may throw more people off imo.

      • Kogasa@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        You shouldn’t rename 2 at all. “Even” has a commonly understood meaning that is instantly recognizable from (variable %2) == 0. The bitmask is an overgeneralization.

      • BeigeAgenda
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        1 year ago

        I give up, I was wrong to even think about the modulo operator, you are clearly the master programmer. 🥇

        This reminds me of a discussion about the ternary operator ? :, some people think its the one true way of writing code because its just so clear what it does. And I say please use it sparingly because if you start doing nested ternary operators its very hard to unpack what your code does, and I prefer readability over compact code, especially with today’s compilers.