EmptyCrate Software. Travel. Stuff.

I felt like this topic deserved one more article. (See part 1 and part 2 for the background.)

The question was posed, "what if you make the list of integers dynamically generated?"

So, I came up with this little generator iterator adaptor. It allows you to take any generator function and treat it like a forward iterator:

#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
 
template<typename Gen, typename Val, int Size>
class generator_itr
{
  private:
    Gen m_g;
    Val m_cur;
    int m_iteration;
 
  public:

After the first article on loop optimization my cousin pointed out to me that in some cases, tail recursion can actually be faster then loops in C with the help of tail recursion elimination. It took several tries to come up with a version that the compiler was able to optimize. I knew I got the version correct when the application stopped segfaulting (I believe it was running out of stack space).

I recently had a friend point out to me that your typical loop seen in every day code has minor inefficiencies in it which can add up to a good amount of time being wasted. I agreed with him, so I set out to write an article on how to optimize your C++ loops.

The results of the research for this article surprised me. I'll first cover the optimization techniques: