Question

In many cases, mostly when you are looping through an array and assigning values to the elements, there is a scope to use post increment operator. Is it considered a good practice.

For example, in the following code where the copying is being done which one is better.

int [] to_assign;
int [] to_include;
int [] from_assign;

// Version 1
int count = 0;
while(i<<some_value>){
  if(to_include[i]==1)
     to_assign[count++] = from_assign[i];
}

// Version 2
int count = 0;
while(i<<some_value>){
  if(to_include[i]==1)
  {     
      to_assign[count] = from_assign[i];
      count++;
  }
}

Answer 1

It’s purely a matter of style. Personally, I’d use whichever one makes the most logical sense. If the increment is logically part of the operation, then use the post-increment. If not, use a separate increment operation.

Also, when you use an increment operator alone, it is generally preferred to use a pre-increment. While it won’t matter with simple types like integers, with more complex types, it can be much more efficient in languages like C++ that have operator overloading because a pre-increment doesn’t need two instances to be around at the same time. There’s no performance impact with Java, because it doesn’t have operator overloading, but if you want a consistent style rule, it should be pre-increment rather than post-increment.