Optimization: bitwise instead of logical

[Raimo33]

I propose a whole refactoring by using bitwise | and & instead of logical || and && for all booleans related conditionals.

This drastically reduces the number of branches, but ultimately has to be benchmarked.

It is something that the compiler can do, but almost never does, because of short circuiting behavior.

In reality, in most real world HPC scenarios, sacrificing short circuiting for a branchless option is almost always better.

This solution works in every architecture.

Example:

if (var1 == true && var2 == false)
Becomes
if ((var1 == true) & (var2 == false))

I argue that it is not harder to read, it just needs an extra parenthesis.

[ibireme]

Thanks! I‘ll try it later.

[Raimo33]

I'm working on it, if it's not a problem. I'm also seeing a lot of room for improvement in terms of branchless code

[Reneg973]

I guess it strongly depends on, how expensive == is and whether condition 1 fails more often than condition 2. E.g. if you know that condition 1 fails more often, then && enables short circuiting, performing better.
if (str1 == "abc" && str2 = "def") is also a boolean condition. I don't think it's better to use bitwise & here.