Local variables before return statements, does it matter?

Question

Sorry if this is a newbie question but I couldn\'t find an answer for this. Is it better to do this:

int result = number/number2;
return result;

Answer 1

Compilers are usually smart enough to optimize this sort of thing as appropriate. See data-flow optimizations on Wikipedia.

In this case, it will probably need to allocate a temporary variable to store the result even if you don't specify one yourself.

Edit: Clashsoft is right about the bytecode compiler:

$ cat a.java
class a {
   public static int a(int x, int y) {
     return x / y;
   }

   public static int b(int x, int y) {
     int r = x/y;
     return r;
   }

   public static int c(int x, int y) {
     final int r = x/y;
     return r;
   }
}
$ javap -c a
Compiled from "a.java"
class a {
  a();
    Code:
       0: aload_0
       1: invokespecial #1                  // Method java/lang/Object."":()V
       4: return

  public static int a(int, int);
    Code:
       0: iload_0
       1: iload_1
       2: idiv
       3: ireturn

  public static int b(int, int);
    Code:
       0: iload_0
       1: iload_1
       2: idiv
       3: istore_2
       4: iload_2
       5: ireturn

  public static int c(int, int);
    Code:
       0: iload_0
       1: iload_1
       2: idiv
       3: istore_2
       4: iload_2
       5: ireturn
}