What a boring title.
Often you’ll find yourself needing to perform a multi-level comparison. The most common example of this is performing a version check when there are major and minor version numbers involved. Bad version number checks are one of the most common sources of errors.
If you’re comparing version numbers, you can use
the VerifyVersionInfo function
to do the version check for you,
assuming you don’t need to
run on operating systems prior to Windows 2000.
Instead of writing a multi-level comparison, you can pack the values into a single comparison. Consider:
inline unsigned __int64
MakeUINT64(DWORD Low, DWORD High)
{
ULARGE_INTEGER Value;
Value.LowPart = Low;
Value.HighPart = High;
return Value.QuadPart;
}
BOOL IsVersionAtLeast(DWORD Major, DWORD Minor,
DWORD MajorDesired, DWORD MinorDesired)
{
return MakeUINT64(Minor, Major) >= MakeUINT64(MinorDesired, MajorDesired);
}
What happened here?
We took the two 32-bit values and combined them into a large 64-bit value, putting the most significant portion in the high-order part and the less significant portion in the lower-order part.
Then we sit back and let the power of mathematics do our work for us. If you remember the rules for comparisons from grade school, you’ll realize that they exactly match the rules we want to apply to our multi-level comparison. Compare the major values; if different, then that’s the result. Otherwise, compare the minor values.
If you still don’t believe it, look at the generated code:
00000 8b 44 24 04 mov eax, DWORD PTR _Major$[esp-4] 00004 3b 44 24 0c cmp eax, DWORD PTR _MajorDesired$[esp-4] 00008 8b 4c 24 08 mov ecx, DWORD PTR _Minor$[esp-4] 0000c 8b 54 24 10 mov edx, DWORD PTR _MinorDesired$[esp-4] 00010 72 0b jb SHORT $L48307 00012 77 04 ja SHORT $L48317 00014 3b ca cmp ecx, edx 00016 72 05 jb SHORT $L48307 $L48317: 00018 33 c0 xor eax, eax 0001a 40 inc eax 0001b eb 02 jmp SHORT $L48308 $L48307: 0001d 33 c0 xor eax, eax $L48308: 0001f c2 10 00 ret 16 ; 00000010H
The code generated by the compiler is equivalent to
BOOL IsVersionAtLeastEquiv(DWORD Major, DWORD Minor,
DWORD MajorDesired, DWORD MinorDesired)
{
if (Major < MajorDesired) return FALSE;
if (Major > MajorDesired) return TRUE;
if (Minor < MinorDesired) return FALSE;
return TRUE;
}
In fact, if you had written the code the (error-prone) old-fashioned way, you would have gotten this:
BOOL IsVersionAtLeast2(DWORD Major, DWORD Minor,
DWORD MajorDesired, DWORD MinorDesired)
{
return Major > MajorDesired ||
(Major == MajorDesired && Minor >= MinorDesired);
}
00000 55 push ebp
00001 8b ec mov ebp, esp
00003 8b 45 08 mov eax, DWORD PTR _Major$[ebp]
00006 3b 45 10 cmp eax, DWORD PTR _MajorDesired$[ebp]
00009 77 0e ja SHORT $L48329
0000b 75 08 jne SHORT $L48328
0000d 8b 45 0c mov eax, DWORD PTR _Minor$[ebp]
00010 3b 45 14 cmp eax, DWORD PTR _MinorDesired$[ebp]
00013 73 04 jae SHORT $L48329
$L48328:
00015 33 c0 xor eax, eax
00017 eb 03 jmp SHORT $L48330
$L48329:
00019 33 c0 xor eax, eax
0001b 40 inc eax
$L48330:
0001c 5d pop ebp
0001d c2 10 00 ret 16 ; 00000010H
which is, as you can see, functionally identical to both previous versions.
You can also pack the values into smaller units, provided you know that there will be no overflow or truncation. For example, if you know that the Major and Minor values will never exceed 65535, you could have used the following:
BOOL SmallIsVersionAtLeast(WORD Major, WORD Minor,
WORD MajorDesired, WORD MinorDesired)
{
return MAKELONG(Minor, Major) >= MAKELONG(MinorDesired, MajorDesired);
}
00000 0f b7 44 24 0c movzx eax, WORD PTR _MajorDesired$[esp-4]
00005 0f b7 4c 24 10 movzx ecx, WORD PTR _MinorDesired$[esp-4]
0000a 0f b7 54 24 08 movzx edx, WORD PTR _Minor$[esp-4]
0000f c1 e0 10 shl eax, 16 ; 00000010H
00012 0b c1 or eax, ecx
00014 0f b7 4c 24 04 movzx ecx, WORD PTR _Major$[esp-4]
00019 c1 e1 10 shl ecx, 16 ; 00000010H
0001c 0b ca or ecx, edx
0001e 33 d2 xor edx, edx
00020 3b c8 cmp ecx, eax
00022 0f 9d c2 setge dl
00025 8b c2 mov eax, edx
00027 c2 10 00 ret 16 ; 00000010H
And if you know that the versions will never exceed 255, then you can go even smaller:
BOOL TinyIsVersionAtLeast(BYTE Major, BYTE Minor,
BYTE MajorDesired, BYTE MinorDesired)
{
return MAKEWORD(Minor, Major) >= MAKEWORD(MinorDesired, MajorDesired);
}
00000 33 c0 xor eax, eax
00002 8a 64 24 0c mov ah, BYTE PTR _MajorDesired$[esp-4]
00006 33 c9 xor ecx, ecx
00008 8a 6c 24 04 mov ch, BYTE PTR _Major$[esp-4]
0000c 8a 44 24 10 mov al, BYTE PTR _MinorDesired$[esp-4]
00010 8a 4c 24 08 mov cl, BYTE PTR _Minor$[esp-4]
00014 66 3b c8 cmp cx, ax
00017 1b c0 sbb eax, eax
00019 40 inc eax
0001a c2 10 00 ret 16 ; 00000010H
Why would you ever need to go smaller if the original version works anyway? Because you might want to make a three-way or four-way comparison, and packing the values smaller allows you to squeeze more keys into the comparison.
BOOL IsVersionBuildAtLeast(
WORD Major, WORD Minor, DWORD Build,
WORD MajorDesired, WORD MinorDesired, DWORD BuildDesired)
{
return MakeUINT64(Build, MAKELONG(Minor, Major)) >=
MakeUINT64(Build, MAKELONG(MinorDesired, MajorDesired));
}
By packing the major version, minor version, and build number into a single 64-bit value, a single comparison operation will compare all three at once. Compare this to the complicated (and teetering-towards unreadable) chain of comparisons you would normally have to write:
return Major > MajorDesired ||
(Major == MajorDesired &&
(Minor >= MinorDesired ||
(Minor == MinorDesired && Build >= BuildDesired)));
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