Chapter 4, question 10

10.  What are the compound assignment operators, and how are they useful?

The compound assignment operators consist of an operation followed by an equals sign, and they are shorthand.  For example,

x += 1;

is the same as

x = x+1;

They are useful because they can enhance readability, for a dumb compiler may result in more optimized output, and prevent an operand being evaluated more than once in cases such as :

* (get_int_pointer()) += 5;