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From: karl@haddock.UUCP (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Style [++i vs i++]
Message-ID: <676@haddock.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Jul-87 14:54:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: haddock.676
Posted: Thu Jul  2 14:54:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 4-Jul-87 08:06:08 EDT
References: <17310@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ISC.COM (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
Lines: 21
Summary: preincrement is "simpler"

In article <17310@amdcad.AMD.COM> tim@amdcad.AMD.COM (Tim Olson) writes:
>Which operator (pre-increment or post-increment) do you use when the side-
>effect is the only desired action and the result is discarded, i.e.
>"for (i=0; i<MAX; ++i)" vs "for (i=0; i<MAX; i++)"

As we all know, the two forms are identical in this context, and this is
purely a question of style.  Having said that, I now state that I always use
"++i", and justify it as follows:

In general, "++i" means (by defn) "i=i+1".  "i++" means "temp=i, i=i+1, temp".
The first form is simpler; I don't need the extra "power" of the postfix
operator, so I don't use it.  (I think this is what you were saying, too.)

The historical reason for my preference: when compiling "(void)++i", the
only obvious code to generate is "i=i+1", but a sufficiently stupid compiler
might translate "(void)i++" into "temp=i; i=i+1" and not notice that the temp
remains unused.  This turns out not to be the case for any compiler I know of,
but you never know.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (ima!haddock!karl or karl@haddock.isc.com), The Walking Lint
(Please, no quibbles like "what if `i' is an expression with side effects".)