␡
- 2-1 Manipulating Rightmost Bits
- 2-2 Addition Combined with Logical Operations
- 2-3 Inequalities among Logical and Arithmetic Expressions
- 2-4 Absolute Value Function
- 2-5 Average of Two Integers
- 2-6 Sign Extension
- 2-7 Shift Right Signed from Unsigned
- 2-8 Sign Function
- 2-9 Three-Valued Compare Function
- 2-10 Transfer of Sign Function
- 2-11 Decoding a "Zero Means 2 **n" Field
- 2-12 Comparison Predicates
- 2-13 Overflow Detection
- 2-14 Condition Code Result of Add, Subtract, and Multiply
- 2-15 Rotate Shifts
- 2-16 Double-Length Add/Subtract
- 2-17 Double-Length Shifts
- 2-18 Multibyte Add, Subtract, Absolute Value
- 2-19 Doz, Max, Min
- 2-20 Exchanging Registers
- 2-21 Alternating among Two or More Values
- 2-22 A Boolean Decomposition Formula
- 2-23 Implementing Instructions for All 16 Binary Boolean Operations
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
2–8 Sign Function
The sign, or signum, function is defined by
It can be calculated with four instructions on most machines [Hop]:
If you don’t have shift right signed, then use the substitute noted at the end of Section 2–7, giving the following nicely symmetric formula (five instructions):
Comparison predicate instructions permit a three-instruction solution, with either
)
Finally, we note that the formula 
almost works; it fails only for x = –231.