Exceptional C++ Style 40 New Engineering Puzzles, Programming Problems, and Solutions

Part . Optimization and Efficiency

We often want or need to make some part of our programs more efficient, and there are a lot of faces to optimization.

From time to time, it has been suggested that using the keyword const can help the compiler optimize code. Is that true or not? Why? Moving beyond const, other programmers like to rely on using the inline keyword for other kinds of optimizations. Does writing inline affect the performance of a program? If so, when, and which way? When can inlining be done, both under programmer control and otherwise?

Finally, we conclude this section with a brain teaser demonstrating how often there's no substitute for knowledge of the application domain to eke out the best possible efficiency, and we'll get an ...