DE wrote:

template<typename type> inline type min(type a, type b) { const type c[2] = {a, b}; return c[b<a]; }

How well this performs compared to the conventional ?: implementation will depend on how the arguments are distributed. If the outcome is skewed, then branch prediction will make the conventional implementation faster. If the outcome is 50/50 (and not correlated with some other branch), then your code may do better.

here's a test code:

#include <vector> int main() { typedef int type; const int n = 1000000; std::vector<type> v1(n), v2(n); //filling v1 and v2 somehow type min = BIG_VALUE; for (size_t i = 0; i<n; ++i) a = min(a, min(v1[i], v2[i])); //searching minima of v1 and v2 return 0; }

So the min(v1[i],v2[i]) is 50/50 (assuming that you fill the arrays with random values), while min(a,...) will be skewed to normally prefer the second arg after the first few cycles. Perhaps you can confirm that your code does better for the former and worse for the latter by testing e.g. a = std::min(a, my::min(v1[i], v2[i])); Is there some reason why a compiler cannot do your optimisation automatically when you write ?: expressions? Regards, Phil.