On Monday 17 January 2011 01:32:39 Walter Bright wrote: > bearophile wrote: > >> 1. Yes it is meaningful - depending on what you're doing. > > > > I am not sure. > > > >> 2. Such a runtime test is expensive in terms of performance and code > >> bloat. > > > > I have not seen even synthetic benchmarks about this. > > Look at the asm dump of a function. It's full of add's - not only ADD > instructions, but addressing mode multiplies and add's. Subtraction is > often expressed in terms of addition, relying on twos-complement > wraparound. > > Trying to remove twos-complement arithmetic from a systems language is like > trying to teach your cat to fetch.
I think that you'd fare better with the cat. :) - Jonathan M Davis