Recently someone told me that a comparison involving smaller integers will be faster, e.g.,
// Case 1
int i = 0;
int j = 1000;
if(i<j) {//do something}
// Case 2
int j = 6000000;
int i = 500000;
if(i<j){//do something else}
so, comparison (if
condition) in Case 1 should be faster than that in Case 2. In Case 2 the integers will take more space to store but that can affect the comparison, I am not sure.
Edit 1: I was thinking of binary representation of i & j, e.g., for i=0, it will be 0 and for j=1000 its 1111101000 (in 32-bit presentation it should be: 22 zeros followed by 1111101000, completely forgot about 32-bit or 64-bit representation, my bad!)
I tried to look at JVM Specification and bytecode of a simple comparison program, nothing made much sense to me. Now the question is how does comparison work for numbers in java? I guess that will also answer why (or why not) any of the cases will be faster.
Edit 2: I am just looking for a detailed explanation, I am not really worried about micro optimizations