Is there a way to limit an integer value to a certain range without branching?

Question

Just out of curiosity. If I have something like:

if(x < 0)     x = 0; if(x > some_maximum)     x = some_maximum;  return x; 

Is there a way to not branch? This is c++.

Addendum: I mean no branch instructions in the assembly. It's a MIPS architecture.

Answer 1

There are bit-tricks to find the minimum or maximum of two numbers, so you could use those to find min(max(x, 0), some_maximum). From here:

y ^ ((x ^ y) & -(x < y)); // min(x, y) x ^ ((x ^ y) & -(x < y)); // max(x, y) 

As the source states though, it's probably faster to do it the normal way, despite the branch