c++ - Which is faster : if (bool) or if(int)?

Question

Which value is better to use? Boolean true or Integer 1?

The above topic made me do some experiments with bool and int in if condition. So just out of curiosity I wrote this program:

int f(int i) 
{
    if ( i ) return 99;   //if(int)
    else  return -99;
}
int g(bool b)
{
    if ( b ) return 99;   //if(bool)
    else  return -99;
}
int main(){}

g++ intbool.cpp -S generates asm code for each functions as follows:

• asm code for f(int)

  __Z1fi:
     LFB0:
           pushl  %ebp
     LCFI0:
            movl  %esp, %ebp
     LCFI1:
            cmpl  $0, 8(%ebp)
            je    L2
            movl  $99, %eax
            jmp   L3
     L2:
            movl  $-99, %eax
     L3:
            leave
     LCFI2:
            ret
  

• asm code for g(bool)

  __Z1gb:
     LFB1:
            pushl %ebp
     LCFI3:
            movl  %esp, %ebp
     LCFI4:
            subl  $4, %esp
     LCFI5:
            movl  8(%ebp), %eax
            movb  %al, -4(%ebp)
            cmpb  $0, -4(%ebp)
            je    L5
            movl  $99, %eax
            jmp   L6
     L5:
            movl  $-99, %eax
     L6:
            leave
     LCFI6:
            ret
  

Surprisingly, g(bool) generates more asm instructions! Does it mean that if(bool) is little slower than if(int)? I used to think bool is especially designed to be used in conditional statement such as if, so I was expecting g(bool) to generate less asm instructions, thereby making g(bool) more efficient and fast.

EDIT:

I'm not using any optimization flag as of now. But even absence of it, why does it generate more asm for g(bool) is a question for which I'm looking for a reasonable answer. I should also tell you that -O2 optimization flag generates exactly same asm. But that isn't the question. The question is what I've asked.

---

Answer 1

Makes sense to me. Your compiler apparently defines a bool as an 8-bit value, and your system ABI requires it to "promote" small (< 32-bit) integer arguments to 32-bit when pushing them onto the call stack. So to compare a bool, the compiler generates code to isolate the least significant byte of the 32-bit argument that g receives, and compares it with cmpb. In the first example, the int argument uses the full 32 bits that were pushed onto the stack, so it simply compares against the whole thing with cmpl.