The Benefits of Constants

Question

I understand one of the big deals about constants is that you don\'t have to go through and update code where that constant is used all over the place. Thats great, but let\'s s

Answer 1

Another possibility, depending on the language, is that the compiler may be able to do some optimizations in a multi-threading environment that would not otherwise be possible. Like if you say:

int b=x*f;
int c=y*f;

In a multi-threaded environment, if f is a variable, the compiler may have to generate a reload of f before the second operation. If f is a constant and the compiler knows it's still in the register, it wouldn't need to reload.