Re: PageGetMaxOffsetNumber on uninitialized pages

Gaetano Mendola wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
>>
>> We could fix this by changing the declarations of the "maxoff" variables
>> to int, but I think it's probably cleaner to recode
>> PageGetMaxOffsetNumber like so:
>>
>> #define PageGetMaxOffsetNumber(page) \
>> (((PageHeader) (page))->pd_lower <= SizeOfPageHeaderData ? 0 : \
>> ((((PageHeader) (page))->pd_lower - SizeOfPageHeaderData) \
>> / sizeof(ItemIdData)))
>
>
> Well I think that is safe change:
>
>
> a <= b ? 0 : ( a-b ) /c
>
> in
>
> max( 0, (a-b)/c )
>
>
>
> so I think (not tested) you can rewrite that macro in:
>
> #define PageGetMaxOffsetNumber(page) \
> (max(0, ((((PageHeader) (page))->pd_lower - SizeOfPageHeaderData) \
> / sizeof(ItemIdData))))

Hi all,
no reply yet! I did this post in a provocative way.
Let me explain.

I know that most probably the max function is written in this way:

int max(int a, int b) { return a < b ? b : a; }

so this means obtain almost the Tom's proposal.

I seen that usually postgres rpm distributed code, I think a big percentage
of postgres installation is used by an rpm, is compiled without taking
care of the architecture. Am I wrong ?

make now some benchmark using these two implementation:

(a) int max(int a, int b) { return a < b ? b : a; }

or this unusual version:

(b) int max(int a, int b) { int i = -(a > b); return (a & i)|(b & ~i); }

make an order of 10E6 maxing compiling your program without specify
the -march parameter.
Do the same specifying if you can -march=pentium3 or -march=pentium4

what I see on my pentiumIII is 100% of improvement, I didn't believe this
improvement just avoid ( I think ) dead branch, specifying the architecture.
So, am I hand waving/red herring ? May be yes, but my conclusion (wrong as
always in this list :-) ) is: if we don't specify the architecture as we do
=> it's better use the nifty ( IMHO ) max implementation => is better write
my suggested macro ( with the opposite max implementation of course ).

Regards
Gaetano Mendola