Will it optimize?
I avoid these types of optimizations, say, 97% of the timeThis reminded me of Linus' blog post on optimizing SHA1 routines in Git [0]. FTA: "Some people seem to think that C is a real programming language, but they are sadly mistaken. It really is about writing almost-portable assembly language, and it turns out that getting good results from SHA1 really is mostly about trying to fight the compilers tendency to try to be clever."[0] http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/08/programming.html