April 2003
Intermediate to advanced
576 pages
15h 13m
English
Comparisons between pairs of data values lie close to the heart of all truly useful CPU operations, from a programmer's perspective. The outcome of a comparison is a Boolean true or false condition that can be used to select alternative sequences of code at a juncture in an algorithm where a choice or branching is needed.
The relationship between comparisons and the concept of predication is very tight. For one outcome (true or false), we want a certain set of actions to occur; for the other outcome (false or true), we want a different set of actions to occur. That is, we want to predicate one set of actions upon one premise (true or false), while we want to predicate the other set of actions upon the opposite ...