Can it? I understand it’s always possible to decompose that to

if (a[i] > 0) return 1 else return 0 end

But why would a compiler do that?

Comparison operations are basic primitives that usually store their result into a register. With branching comparison operators potentially also available, but if there’s a branching comparator operation in your ISA, then there’s almost certainly also a pure comparator operation in your ISA, because you can always compose a branching comparator from simple comparison operation followed by a basic equality comparison of the result.

So I guess my question is, while it’s technically possible for a compiler to compile this into a branching operations, under what circumstances would a compiler actually choose to do that, given there’s isn’t a clear benefit?