[v3] conditional tweak

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Jerry Quinn <jlquinn@optonline.net> writes:

| Gabriel Dos Reis writes:
|  > Phil Edwards <phil@codesourcery.com> writes:
|  > 
|  > | Here's my opinion before I vanish into non-networked-land for a few days:
|  > | for years, the GCC team has been warning of the dangers of slowing down the
|  > | compiler and runtime by a few percent at a time, because it accumulates
|  > | so quickly.
|  > 
|  > I'm just asking for an actual data. Can we have one?
|  > 
|  > -- Gaby
| 
| I didn't actually see any difference on an AMD XP2100, but the only
| other platform I can really test is a mobile P4.
| 
| I submitted the patch on the theory that this is a frequently called
| function in output numbers and this should potentially allow for
| improvements on machines that can benefit.  The only thought I had
| against it was that machines usually predict against forward branches,
| in which case, they are already biased away from the initialization
| code.

Thanks for the input!

I'm not against this kind of patch in principle.  However, before it
gets committed, I would like to see actual data -- because it has
uglicifation components that should be justfied.  

This is not directed to you in particular, it is a general comment:  I
don't buy arguments saying that "this ain't possibly do xxx, thus I
see no yyy not to have it."  We should be able to justify software
construction on better grounds.  We've made past decisions based on
such arguments; they have not proven to be a bright success.

-- Gaby