Written in
C and C-like languages (like
C++ and
Perl) as a prefixed "
++":
++x. An
expression which
increments
x as a
side effect, and has its new value. So in C, it is exactly equivalent to the more verbose
(x += 1).
You can use this to push an element onto the end of an array, if you're using an index to the last element; however, it's cleaner to store the number of elements, and use postincrement (see the example in that node).
Generally used when reading some array. For example, to chop off the remainder of a string after some character, you could write:
void chop(char *s, char c)
{
while (*s && *++s != c)
;
*s = 0;
}
In C++, preincrement is generally prefered to postincrement (especially on an
object), since it usually avoids a call to the
copy constructor.