C job interview - casting and comparing

Question

I was confronted with a tricky (IMO) question. I needed to compare two MAC addresses, in the most efficient manner.

The only thought that crossed my mind in that moment

Answer 1

You have a MAC structure (which contains an array of 6 bytes),

typedef struct {
    char data[6];
} MAC;

Which agrees with this article about typedef for fixed length byte array.

The naive approach would be to assume the MAC address is word aligned (which is probably what the interviewer wanted), albeit not guaranteed.

typedef unsigned long u32;
typedef   signed long s32;
typedef unsigned short u16;
typedef   signed short s16;

int
MACcmp(MAC* mac1, MAC* mac2)
{
    if(!mac1 || !mac2) return(-1); //check for NULL args
    u32 m1 = *(u32*)mac1->data;
    U32 m2 = *(u32*)mac2->data;
    if( m1 != m2 ) return (s32)m1 - (s32)m2;
    u16 m3 = *(u16*)(mac1->data+4);
    u16 m2 = *(u16*)(mac2->data+4);
    return (s16)m3 - (s16)m4;
}

Slightly safer would be to interpret the char[6] as a short[3] (MAC more likely to be aligned on even byte boundaries than odd),

typedef unsigned short u16;
typedef   signed short s16;

int
MACcmp(MAC* mac1, MAC* mac2)
{
    if(!mac1 || !mac2) return(-1); //check for NULL args
    u16* p1 = (u16*)mac1->data;
    u16* p2 = (u16*)mac2->data;
    for( n=0; n<3; ++n ) {
        if( *p1 != *p2 ) return (s16)*p1 - (s16)*p2;
    }
    return(0);
}

Assume nothing, and copy to word aligned storage, but the only reason for typecasting here is to satisfy the interviewer,

typedef unsigned short u16;
typedef   signed short s16;

int
MACcmp(MAC* mac1, MAC* mac2)
{
    if(!mac1 || !mac2) return(-1); //check for NULL args
    u16 m1[3]; u16 p2[3];
    memcpy(m1,mac1->data,6);
    memcpy(m2,mac2->data,6);
    for( n=0; n<3; ++n ) {
        if( m1[n] != m2[n] ) return (s16)m1[n] - (s16)m2[n];
    }
    return(0);
}

Save yourself lots of work,

int
MACcmp(MAC* mac1, MAC* mac2)
{
    if(!mac1 || !mac2) return(-1);
    return memcmp(mac1->data,mac2->data,6);
}