I did say “one of the goals”. I don’t see how those examples are relevant. Why would that last one be faster? I agree that the OpenBSD code here is good, no m

I did say “one of the goals”. I don’t see how those examples are relevant. Why would that last one be faster? I agree that the OpenBSD code here is good, no more and no less than needed. I assumed the grandparent was referring to cases where an O(n) algorithm is used where it might be O(log n) or O(1) with just a little more effort. It’s a tradeoff, sure, and in some cases linear searches can work surprisingly well, but in general I think this kind of thing should always be considered in good code. Micro-optimizations like inline assembly for inner loops may or may not be a good idea, depending on the application. All else being equal, I’d certainly agree that good clean code would not use assembly.