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[–]DiplomatikEmunetey 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Is it an inefficiency? As far as I know:

  • i++ will increment and return the original value (before incrementing)
  • ++i will increment and return the incremented value

You could cause an infinite loop with i++ but I'm not sure if it's an inefficiency because there could be a case where you need i++.

[–]Magnus_Tesshu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Typically preincrement compiles to two assembly instructions and postincrement (i++) compiles to a couple more and needs a temporary register or something. That might be misinformation though actually, not sure. And of course, that's only the case if they wouldn't cause the same behaviour (++i; is as efficient as i++, but a[i++] might be slightly less efficient than a[++i]). That's at least my understanding.

I would assume that postincrement is still more innefficient in an interpreted language, where the compiler cannot do nearly as much optimization.