Benefits of using short-circuit evaluation

Question

boolean a = false, b = true;
if ( a && b ) { ... };

In most languages, b will not get evaluated because a is fals

Answer 1

Short circuit evaluation is translated into branches in assembly language in the same way if statements are (branches are basically a goto), which means it is not going to be any slower than if statements.

Branches don't typically stall the pipeline, but the processor will guess whether the branch is taken or not, and if the processor is wrong it will have to flush everything that has happened since it made the wrong guess from the pipeline.

Short circuit evaluation is also the most common name for it, and is found in most languages in some form or another.