Use of const double for intermediate results
- by Arne
Hi,
I a writing a Simulation program and wondering if the use of const double is of any use when storing intermediate results. Consider this snippet:
double DoSomeCalculation(const AcModel &model) {
(...)
const double V = model.GetVelocity();
const double m = model.GetMass();
const double cos_gamma = cos(model.GetFlightPathAngleRad());
(...)
return m*V*cos_gamma*Chi_dot;
}
Note that the sample is there only to illustrate -- it might not make to much sense from the engineering side of things. The motivation of storing for example cos_gamma in a variable is that this cosine is used many time in other expressions covered by (...) and I feel that the code gets more readable when using
cos_gamma
rather than
cos(model.GetFlightPathAngleRad())
in various expressions. Now the actual is question is this: since I expect the cosine to be the same througout the code section and I actually created the thing only as a placeholder and for convenience I tend to declare it const. Is there a etablished opinion on wether this is good or bad practive or whether it might bite me in the end? Does a compiler make any use of this additional information or am I actually hindering the compiler from performing useful optimizations?
Arne
