How to do unsigned saturating addition in C?

Question

What is the best (cleanest, most efficient) way to write saturating addition in C?

The function or macro should add two unsigned inputs (need both 16- and 32-bit ver

Answer 1

The best performance will usually involve inline assembly (as some have already stated).

But for portable C, these functions only involve one comparison and no type-casting (and thus I believe optimal):

unsigned saturate_add_uint(unsigned x, unsigned y)
{
    if (y > UINT_MAX - x) return UINT_MAX;
    return x + y;
}

unsigned short saturate_add_ushort(unsigned short x, unsigned short y)
{
    if (y > USHRT_MAX - x) return USHRT_MAX;
    return x + y;
}

As macros, they become:

SATURATE_ADD_UINT(x, y) (((y)>UINT_MAX-(x)) ? UINT_MAX : ((x)+(y)))
SATURATE_ADD_USHORT(x, y) (((y)>SHRT_MAX-(x)) ? USHRT_MAX : ((x)+(y)))

I leave versions for 'unsigned long' and 'unsigned long long' as an exercise to the reader. ;-)