Is < faster than <=?

Question

Is if( a < 901 ) faster than if( a <= 900 ).

Not exactly as in this simple example, but there are slight performance changes on loop

Answer 1

I see that neither is faster. The compiler generates the same machine code in each condition with a different value.

if(a < 901)
cmpl  $900, -4(%rbp)
jg .L2

if(a <=901)
cmpl  $901, -4(%rbp)
jg .L3

My example if is from GCC on x86_64 platform on Linux.

Compiler writers are pretty smart people, and they think of these things and many others most of us take for granted.

I noticed that if it is not a constant, then the same machine code is generated in either case.

int b;
if(a < b)
cmpl  -4(%rbp), %eax
jge   .L2

if(a <=b)
cmpl  -4(%rbp), %eax
jg .L3