3 ms·

If anything it would be time lost to accidentally typing ++x instead of x++. I always found the precedence to be pretty intuitive in C (unary ops generally bind

If anything it would be time lost to accidentally typing ++x instead of x++. I always found the precedence to be pretty intuitive in C (unary ops generally bind tightest). The only time you'd have to Google is if you were doing something weird like `-(x++)`. I'm also willing to accept that I'm old, stubborn, and unhappy about changing my ways and that this is the future... :)

kinofcain 11y ago
See I always thought most people who wrote foo++ actually meant ++foo and it typically only came up when the operator precedence made the two not equivalent, causing a subtle bug. I can't even think of a time where I really needed a use-then-increment operator where I wouldn't have just used the value, then incremented it on the next line anyway (maybe even with a post-increment out of habit).
- mmastrac 11y ago
  Interesting. I generally choose x++ for the majority of array-striding code I write, and usually as a shortcut to avoid having a bunch of x++ lines scattered around. I've found that you can structure your code either way and postfix seems to be easier to reason over for me. I use ++x very infrequently, and mainly in hand-written text parsers.
  - sbmassey 11y ago
    I generally assume that ++x is idiomatic in c++, and x++ in c, because in c++ you may be calling against some non-primitive type, where the update-and-return-the-non-updated-value semantics of the postfix version are not optimisable away.
  - kinofcain 11y ago
    Well, I guess we're both going to do it the same way in swift 3, which is probably the whole point...
- stormbrew 11y ago
  int arr[5]; int i = 0; while (shouldIKeepGoing() && i < 5) arr[i++] = getAThing(); If you use ++i there you'll skip 0 and overflow the array. This is what the postfix form is for, if you value terseness. Edit: To clarify, I'm not necessarily saying you don't know that's what it's for, but this is a pattern I see pretty frequently in the wild so I'm just throwing it out there with an explanation of why people find value in it.
boulos 11y ago
I generally agree, except in the case of more than one per statement / expression as munificent pointed out above. What does: int x = 0; printf("%d %d", x++, x++); print? Is that true for all systems and compilers? (Answer: nope!).

kinofcain 11y ago

See I always thought most people who wrote foo++ actually meant ++foo and it typically only came up when the operator precedence made the two not equivalent, causing a subtle bug. I can't even think of a time where I really needed a use-then-increment operator where I wouldn't have just used the value, then incremented it on the next line anyway (maybe even with a post-increment out of habit).

mmastrac 11y ago
Interesting. I generally choose x++ for the majority of array-striding code I write, and usually as a shortcut to avoid having a bunch of x++ lines scattered around. I've found that you can structure your code either way and postfix seems to be easier to reason over for me. I use ++x very infrequently, and mainly in hand-written text parsers.
- sbmassey 11y ago
  I generally assume that ++x is idiomatic in c++, and x++ in c, because in c++ you may be calling against some non-primitive type, where the update-and-return-the-non-updated-value semantics of the postfix version are not optimisable away.
- kinofcain 11y ago
  Well, I guess we're both going to do it the same way in swift 3, which is probably the whole point...
stormbrew 11y ago
int arr[5]; int i = 0; while (shouldIKeepGoing() && i < 5) arr[i++] = getAThing(); If you use ++i there you'll skip 0 and overflow the array. This is what the postfix form is for, if you value terseness. Edit: To clarify, I'm not necessarily saying you don't know that's what it's for, but this is a pattern I see pretty frequently in the wild so I'm just throwing it out there with an explanation of why people find value in it.

boulos 11y ago

I generally agree, except in the case of more than one per statement / expression as munificent pointed out above. What does: int x = 0; printf("%d %d", x++, x++); print? Is that true for all systems and compilers? (Answer: nope!).