Coding tip: i++ vs. ++i

Using the index i is very popular in coding, and as every developer knows, there are two ways to increment it:

1. i++: increments i, but returns the pre-increment value.
2. ++i: increments i, and returns the post-increment value.

Now, suppose you have a generic for loop, what would you use to increment i?

for(int i = 0; i < N; i++)

{

    doSomething();

}

OR

for(int i = 0; i < N; ++i)

{

    doSomething();

}

The school way says using i++, but let's think about it...

Compiling "i++" will be something like that (assembly pseudo-code):

      tmp = i

      i = i + 1

      return tmp

However, compiling "++i" will look like this:

      i = i + 1

      return i

So, using ++i will save one assembly assignment command and therefore, it's better to use ++i to increment the index in cases you don't use the pre-increment value.

Note1: I'm pretty sure that most of the compilers will optimize using i++ and convert it to ++i automatically, but coding the right way shows understanding which is valuable.

Note2: While I tried to write i < N w/o the spaces, blogger popped-up a warning says that my text has no ending delimiter, although I'm under "Compose" tab and not "HTML" tab... nice BUG :)