That looks better indeed.  It is almost never safe to use subtraction
in a compare function.  Even for plain int it is possible to have
signed integer overflow, which is undefined behavior.

The only safe patterns are:

    int ret = a > b ? 1 : a < b ? -1 : 0;

or:

    int ret = (a > b) - (a < b);

Personally, I prefer an expanded version of the first one, as you
chose to do.

OK millert@

 - todd