Shortening compiling time.

[lfnunley]

Hello Cplusplus.com! I am thinking about doing a science project on the effect of different ways of stating code (like a do loop instead of a while loop) on the compile/execution speed. I have been researching for the past hour, but I can not find any resources that state how a compiler works in a nontechnical format. Does anybody know where I can find a resource like this?

[helios]

compile/execution speed

Well, which one? The two are completely unrelated.

I can not find any resources that state how a compiler works in a nontechnical format

If you're going down to the level of do while vs. while, then you aren't going to find anything.
That level isn't useful, anyway, since the difference is trivial compared to things like the size of the codebase (in the case of compilation time) or data structures used (in the case of run time).

[zb0S216C]

I believe that reducing the size of each header and source module governs compilation speed. Execution speed, on the other hand, is governed by the implemented code optimizations and the hardware speed. A CPU with a speed of 1Ghz (1 billion computations per second) will execute a program faster than a 500Mhz (500 million computations per second) CPU. The latency of your installed RAM is also a factor. I won't go into any more detail since this is a programming forum, not Tom's Hardware.

_Wazzak