Do temp variables slow down my program?

Question

Suppose I have the following C code:

int i = 5;
int j = 10;
int result = i + j;

If I\'m looping over this many times, would it be faster to

Answer 1

While all sorts of trivial differences to the code can perturb the compiler's behavior in ways that mildly improve or worsen performance, in principle it it should not make any performance difference whether you use temp variables like this as long as the meaning of the program is not changed. A good compiler should generate the same, or comparable, code either way, unless you're intentionally building with optimization off in order to get machine code that's as close as possible to the source (e.g. for debugging purposes).