What is the difference between i++ and ++i?

Question

I\'ve seen them both being used in numerous pieces of C# code, and I\'d like to know when to use i++ or ++i (i being a number variable

Answer 1

The way the operator works is that it gets incremented at the same time, but if it is before a variable, the expression will evaluate with the incremented/decremented variable:

int x = 0;   //x is 0
int y = ++x; //x is 1 and y is 1

If it is after the variable the current statement will get executed with the original variable, as if it had not yet been incremented/decremented:

int x = 0;   //x is 0
int y = x++; //'y = x' is evaluated with x=0, but x is still incremented. So, x is 1, but y is 0

I agree with dcp in using pre-increment/decrement (++x) unless necessary. Really the only time I use the post-increment/decrement is in while loops or loops of that sort. These loops are the same:

while (x < 5)  //evaluates conditional statement
{
    //some code
    ++x;       //increments x
}

or

while (x++ < 5) //evaluates conditional statement with x value before increment, and x is incremented
{
    //some code
}

You can also do this while indexing arrays and such:

int i = 0;
int[] MyArray = new int[2];
MyArray[i++] = 1234; //sets array at index 0 to '1234' and i is incremented
MyArray[i] = 5678;   //sets array at index 1 to '5678'
int temp = MyArray[--i]; //temp is 1234 (becasue of pre-decrement);

Etc, etc...