Incrementing in C++ - When to Use X++ or ++X?

Scott Meyers tells you to prefer prefix except on those occasions where logic would dictate that postfix is appropriate.

"More Effective C++" item #6 - that's sufficient authority for me.

For those who don't own the book, here are the pertinent quotes. From page 32:

From your days as a C programmer, you may recall that the prefix form of the increment operator is sometimes called "increment and fetch", while the postfix form is often known as "fetch and increment." The two phrases are important to remember, because they all but act as formal specifications...

And on page 34:

If you're the kind who worries about efficiency, you probably broke into a sweat when you first saw the postfix increment function. That function has to create a temporary object for its return value and the implementation above also creates an explicit temporary object that has to be constructed and destructed. The prefix increment function has no such temporaries...

From cppreference when incrementing iterators:

You should prefer pre-increment operator (++iter) to post-increment operator (iter++) if you are not going to use the old value. Post-increment is generally implemented as follows:

   Iter operator++(int)   {
     Iter tmp(*this); // store the old value in a temporary object
     ++*this;         // call pre-increment
     return tmp;      // return the old value   }

Obviously, it's less efficient than pre-increment.

Pre-increment does not generate the temporary object. This can make a significant difference if your object is expensive to create.

I just want to notice that the geneated code is offen the same if you use pre/post incrementation where the semantic (of pre/post) doesn't matter.

example:

pre.cpp:

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
  int i = 13;
  i++;
  for (; i < 42; i++)
    {
      std::cout << i << std::endl;
    }
}

post.cpp:

#include <iostream>

int main()
{

  int i = 13;
  ++i;
  for (; i < 42; ++i)
    {
      std::cout << i << std::endl;
    }
}

_

$> g++ -S pre.cpp
$> g++ -S post.cpp
$> diff pre.s post.s   
1c1
<   .file   "pre.cpp"
---
>   .file   "post.cpp"

The most important thing to keep in mind, imo, is that x++ needs to return the value before the increment actually took place -- therefore, it has to make a temporary copy of the object (pre increment). This is less effecient than ++x, which is incremented in-place and returned.

Another thing worth mentioning, though, is that most compilers will be able to optimize such unnecessary things away when possible, for instance both options will lead to same code here:

for (int i(0);i<10;++i)
for (int i(0);i<10;i++)

I agree with @BeowulfOF, though for clarity I would always advocate splitting the statements so that the logic is absolutely clear, i.e.:

i++;
x += i;

or

x += i;
i++;

So my answer is if you write clear code then this should rarely matter (and if it matters then your code is probably not clear enough).

If count{5};

If you use ++count it will be process beforethe statement

total = --count +6;

Total will be equal to 10

If you use count++ it will be process after the statement

total = count-- +6;

Total will be equal to 11

Just wanted to re-emphasize that ++x is expected to be faster than x++, (especially if x is an object of some arbitrary type), so unless required for logical reasons, ++x should be used.

Postfix form of ++,-- operator follows the rule use-then-change ,

Prefix form (++x,--x) follows the rule change-then-use.

Example 1:

When multiple values are cascaded with << using cout then calculations(if any) take place from right-to-left but printing takes place from left-to-right e.g., (if val if initially 10)

 cout<< ++val<<" "<< val++<<" "<< val;

will result into

12    10    10