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by IshKebab 1216 days ago
That depends. In some cases the compiler will be able to determine that `expensiveCheck()` has no side effects and make them equivalent. But you can't really rely on it.

And in any case the author misidentified the problem and solution. The problem is that C++ coerces bool to int. I'm 99% sure there's a warning for that that you can turn into an error.
1 comments
kqr 1216 days ago
Ah, the mythical sufficiently smart compiler! http://wiki.c2.com/?SufficientlySmartCompiler
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IshKebab 1216 days ago
That's a different thing - the "sufficiently smart compiler" is postulating that it doesn't matter if a language is not very high performance because somehow magically there will one day be a compiler that can just figure out how to optimise the code in every case.

I'm just saying that in this particular case, sometimes the compiler will be able to optimise it but you can't rely on it.

https://godbolt.org/z/WshcfWPEh

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