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Rollup merge of #93962 - joboet:branchless_slice_ord, r=Mark-Simulacrum
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Make [u8]::cmp implementation branchless

The current implementation generates rather ugly assembly code, branching when the common parts are equal. By performing the comparison of the lengths upfront using a subtraction, the assembly gets much prettier: https://godbolt.org/z/4e5fnEKGd.

This will probably not impact speed too much, as the expensive part is in most cases the `memcmp`, but it sure looks better (I'm porting a sorting algorithm currently, and that branch just bothered me).
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matthiaskrgr committed Feb 16, 2022
2 parents 01f0da2 + 3960ce6 commit 9a42121
Showing 1 changed file with 11 additions and 12 deletions.
23 changes: 11 additions & 12 deletions library/core/src/slice/cmp.rs
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,7 +1,6 @@
//! Comparison traits for `[T]`.

use crate::cmp;
use crate::cmp::Ordering::{self, Greater, Less};
use crate::cmp::{self, Ordering};
use crate::mem;

use super::from_raw_parts;
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -189,18 +188,18 @@ impl<A: Ord> SliceOrd for A {
impl SliceOrd for u8 {
#[inline]
fn compare(left: &[Self], right: &[Self]) -> Ordering {
let order =
// SAFETY: `left` and `right` are references and are thus guaranteed to be valid.
// We use the minimum of both lengths which guarantees that both regions are
// valid for reads in that interval.
unsafe { memcmp(left.as_ptr(), right.as_ptr(), cmp::min(left.len(), right.len())) };
// Since the length of a slice is always less than or equal to isize::MAX, this never underflows.
let diff = left.len() as isize - right.len() as isize;
// This comparison gets optimized away (on x86_64 and ARM) because the subtraction updates flags.
let len = if left.len() < right.len() { left.len() } else { right.len() };
// SAFETY: `left` and `right` are references and are thus guaranteed to be valid.
// We use the minimum of both lengths which guarantees that both regions are
// valid for reads in that interval.
let mut order = unsafe { memcmp(left.as_ptr(), right.as_ptr(), len) as isize };
if order == 0 {
left.len().cmp(&right.len())
} else if order < 0 {
Less
} else {
Greater
order = diff;
}
order.cmp(&0)
}
}

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