[c++] Efficiency

[Simonius]

Well I was just doing some practice exercises and browsing the forum and two questions popped up.

a) when is endl better then \n?
I've found an old topic here (http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread133064.html) which says that endl flushes the buffer but doesn't really go into when which is or becomes more efficient.

b) is this coding efficient or still some leeway from improvement.
Basicly I want to check if the first letter is the same as the last letter, second same as the letter before the last, ... (I don't like the make it to easy for searchers when I post code ;) ).

for(int i=0;(length%2==0?i!=length/2:i+1!=length/2);++i){
    if(word[i]!=word[length-i-1])
        correct=0;
}

Variables: word is a string and length is how many characters the string is.
I get the length with:

for(int i=0;word[i]!='\0';++i)
    ++length;

I'm always curious about things that may have an impact on my codes efficiency so if you think something else is worth mentioning, feel free to do so.

[weaknessforcats]

Use endl when yoiu want to be sure your data is flushed out of the output buffer. Not using it may result in your asking a question on the screen and the user won't see it. Or writing a record to a disc file and then finding that it's not there.

Therefore, use the \n unless you need ot be certain your data has left yout program.

The only info ob your palindrome is to avoid calculations in the decision part of a loop since thise calculations muist be done on each cycle of the loop. Better to do the calculation once, put the result in a variable and then use the variable.