4 ms·

I think the branching could be avoided by using a cast from boolean to integer, "(haystack[4] <= needle)*4", instead of a ternary operator. It doesn't help at

I think the branching could be avoided by using a cast from boolean to integer, "(haystack[4] <= needle)*4", instead of a ternary operator. It doesn't help at all with the data lookups, though, which is the bigger problem.

pacman128 9y ago
It depends on the optimization level. Using no optimization, gcc 5.4 will use branches for this case, but using -O2, it avoids the branches (on x86_64). Verified by using gcc -S to show the assembly generated.