C++ Footprint and Performance Optimization

Loops

This section focuses on loop statements. Loops have a way of making a source code listing look relatively compact as repetitions of statements are coded only once. This is where loops present a danger to performance as well; any small inefficiency in the body of a loop will be incurred as many times as the loop body is iterated over. A loop that has one superfluous statement and that is iterated over 10,000 times will, of course, cause 10,000 superfluous statements to be executed. Consequently, loops are the places where most often a lot of performance can be won. This section presents several techniques that can be used to optimize loops.

Aborting Loops

Often, loops are implemented with termination conditions, as shown in the following ...