Ioannis has a point (but maybe not the one I initially thought he was making... ).

What about:

if (a.highbyte xornot b.highbyte) and (a.lowbyte xornot b.lowbyte) then

' do stuff

endif

This removes an if-then macro/template from the timing equation.

You will always be making two comparisons to confirm equality, but there will be an overhead of potentially one unneccessary compare when a and b are not equal (but, hey, at least you know for sure how fast the code operates)

I'm sort of attached to xornot now...don't want to let it go...

Phil.

and I wish I had a stickfigure that did the 'dance of the happy programmer'