I’m a windows PC game developer using MSVC 2015 update 1, working in C++.

More and more, I hear people talk about how great clang is, and that it generates much better code than MSVC, among other niceties.

I have been chalking it up to maybe just being a fad, but keeping my feelers out there to see if I can get some concrete comparitive info.

Well, I’ve stumbled on some of that concrete comparitive info and want to share it with anyone else who is wondering if clang really is better than MSVC. This is just one data point, but it feels like it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

On twitter, Jason Turner (@lefticus) had an interesting tweet:



I wasn’t really sure what he was getting at, so clicked the link to check it out (http://godbolt.org/g/WDpPYq).

It turned out to be very relevant to my interest, because his particular example is comparing a value to a bunch of compile time constants. That is basically the core of what I’ve been looking into with my last few posts asking whether code or data was faster!

This first particular example is comparing a compile time constant to other compile time constants, so the code completely melts away and at runtime just returns the compile time calculated result. That isn’t very interesting, but it is nice to see that clang did so much at compile time. FWIW MSVC was able to do this all at compile time as well, so they are even so far.

What is more interesting is what happens when you test a compile time unknown against compile time constants. Let’s check it out… (https://godbolt.org/g/dKBDSK)

What the assembly does is subtract 1 from the input (it’s unsigned so if 0, wraps around to max int value), and then compares it against 5 to know if it’s in the group or not. Clang realized the numbers were continuous and so made a nice optimization.

In this case, MSVC did similar in release x64:

#include <initializer_list> template<typename U, typename ... T> bool one_of(U&& u, T && ... t) { bool match = false; (void)std::initializer_list<bool>{ (match = match || u == t)... }; return match; } int main(int argc, char** argv) { 00007FF62DB61000 lea eax,[rcx-1] 00007FF62DB61003 cmp eax,4 00007FF62DB61006 setbe al return one_of(argc, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 00007FF62DB61009 movzx eax,al } 00007FF62DB6100C ret

But in x86 release it did a bunch of if/else if/else if’s!

#include <initializer_list> template<typename U, typename ... T> bool one_of(U&& u, T && ... t) { bool match = false; (void)std::initializer_list<bool>{ (match = match || u == t)... }; return match; } int main(int argc, char** argv) { 00331002 in al,dx return one_of(argc, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 00331003 mov eax,dword ptr [argc] 00331006 cmp eax,1 00331009 je main+26h (0331026h) 0033100B cmp eax,2 0033100E je main+26h (0331026h) 00331010 cmp eax,3 00331013 je main+26h (0331026h) 00331015 cmp eax,4 00331018 je main+26h (0331026h) 0033101A cmp eax,5 0033101D je main+26h (0331026h) 0033101F xor al,al 00331021 movzx eax,al } 00331024 pop ebp 00331025 ret return one_of(argc, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 00331026 mov al,1 00331028 movzx eax,al } 0033102B pop ebp 0033102C ret

You are probably asking “what does clang do in x86?” well it turns out it does the same thing as in x64, it doesn’t fall back to if/else if/else if like MVSC does (proof: add -m32 in goldbolt. https://godbolt.org/g/khnrtO). One point to clang!

What if the numbers are not so continuous though? It turns out it can actually switch to using a binary search! (https://godbolt.org/g/iBkqja)

MSVC on the other hand just does a bunch of if/else if/else if tests, in both x86 release and x64 release.

#include <initializer_list> template<typename U, typename ... T> bool one_of(U&& u, T && ... t) { bool match = false; (void)std::initializer_list<bool>{ (match = match || u == t)... }; return match; } int main(const int argc, const char *[]) { 00007FF6C05A1000 cmp ecx,1AB42h 00007FF6C05A1006 je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1008 cmp ecx,40Fh 00007FF6C05A100E je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1010 cmp ecx,0B131h 00007FF6C05A1016 je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1018 cmp ecx,93BBh 00007FF6C05A101E je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1020 cmp ecx,121Bh 00007FF6C05A1026 je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1028 cmp ecx,0EE9h 00007FF6C05A102E je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1030 cmp ecx,0E1Fh 00007FF6C05A1036 je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1038 cmp ecx,995h 00007FF6C05A103E je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1040 cmp ecx,5FEh 00007FF6C05A1046 je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1048 cmp ecx,5BFh 00007FF6C05A104E je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1050 cmp ecx,5 00007FF6C05A1053 je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) 00007FF6C05A1055 cmp ecx,0FFFEh 00007FF6C05A105B je main+63h (07FF6C05A1063h) return one_of(argc, 1471, 2453, 3817, 45361, 37819, 109378, 1534, 4635, 1039, 3615, 5, 65534); 00007FF6C05A105D xor al,al 00007FF6C05A105F movzx eax,al } 00007FF6C05A1062 ret return one_of(argc, 1471, 2453, 3817, 45361, 37819, 109378, 1534, 4635, 1039, 3615, 5, 65534); 00007FF6C05A1063 mov al,1 00007FF6C05A1065 movzx eax,al } 00007FF6C05A1068 ret

Closing

This is just one data point about how clang is better than MSVC, but it is a data point. I’m betting there are more if we looked for them.

This makes me wonder how switch statements do in clang vs msvc, and also makes me wonder if clang ever uses jump tables or more advanced data structures in either switch statements, or other code that does comparison against a potentially large number of compile time constants. Those thoughts are driven by this things seen in this article: Something You May Not Know About the Switch Statement in C/C++

The examples above used C++14 level C++ to implement “one_of”. If you can use C++17 level C++, you can also implement it this way, which also does the binary search (Also written by Jason Turner):

https://godbolt.org/g/RZgjRQ

PS wouldn’t it be nice if godbolt supported MSVC so we could do this sort of analysis on MSVC code? It’s in the works, but unsure when it’ll be available. Apparently licensing isn’t the issue, so lets hope it comes sooner rather than later! If you want it, maybe ping @mattgodbolt and let him know how much you want that functionality (:

Have any other clang vs MSVC info? If so, I’d love to hear about it!