To me it looks like something related to some other optimization pass (I don't know much about gcc passes). But not related to writes to memory. Here are two wr

To me it looks like something related to some other optimization pass (I don't know much about gcc passes). But not related to writes to memory. Here are two writes both using cmov (on different code): https://godbolt.org/z/n3dTrPo6e https://godbolt.org/z/n3dTrPo6e Edit: compiling your code without modifications, but with `-Os` also gives two cmov's: https://godbolt.org/z/r86azb7be https://godbolt.org/z/r86azb7be