Raymond Chen has this to say on his recent post on code optimizations... Obvious optimizations - one that begs to be optimized - tend to be \"de-optimizations\" if you conside
My favourite is
// original code
int a[10];
a[5] = 3;
// optimized code
int a[10];
*(a + 5) = 3;
Yes, all of a sudden, that's magically faster!!</sarcasm>
My favorite example would be the XOR swap algorithm:
// swap these two values:
int x = 4;
int y = 2;
// original:
int temp = x;
x = y;
y = temp;
// optimized version:
x ^= y;
y ^= x;
x ^= y;
Yes, it uses no temporary variable, and can usually be done in three processor cycles, but it sure isn't obvious what it does!
Duff's Device, which is so twisted that it looks like it shouldn't even compile in ISO C:
int n = (count + 7) / 8;
switch (count % 8) {
case 0: do { *to = *from++;
case 7: *to = *from++;
case 6: *to = *from++;
case 5: *to = *from++;
case 4: *to = *from++;
case 3: *to = *from++;
case 2: *to = *from++;
case 1: *to = *from++;
} while (--n > 0);
}