Question

I’ve seen some code that looks like this:

if (a) return false;
if (b) return false;
if (c) return false;
return true;

Is there any difference in performance between the above and

if (a || b || c) return false;
else return true;

In general, what would be the preferred case to handle this? Maybe without the else in my second example?

EDIT: It seems a lot of people were mislead by the fact that I return true or false and suggest returning !(a || b || c). This wasn’t what I wanted to ask. Imagine if instead of returning true or false I want to return “Yes” or “No”, or 23423 or 3.

Answer 1

It all comes down to how the compiler compiles the code. For all practical purposes, they are identical. (As long as you make sure to use short-curcuited OR “||”)