Branch on ?: operator?

Question

For a typical modern compiler on modern hardware, will the ? : operator result in a branch that affects the instruction pipeline?

In other words which i

Answer 1

I can't imagine the first method would ever be faster.

With the first method you may avoid a branch, but you replace it with a function call, which would usually involve a branch plus a lot more (unless it was inlined). Even if inlined, unless the functionality inside the purge() function was absolutely trivial it would almost certainly be slower.