When I don't care about the result, I always write preinc/decrement too. Sure, it's superfluous on any non-braindead compiler (it should be able to see that you don't care about the result of a postincrement and elide the temporary), but it's just habit at this point. I fail to see how it reduces or changes readability though.

Sounds like you just have an axe to grind with Drepper.

I don't have anything personal against Drepper. I've never had any direct experience with him of any kind.

I thoroughly enjoyed his article about memory. He is obviously an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable guy.

I am afraid that he is too clever by half though, insofar as good code is clean and readable first, and clever second. Every time I've had an opportunity to interact with the glibc codebase I'm dismayed that such an important, core piece of software has been written so cleverly that it essentially can only be maintained by one guy.

That's unfortunate; I'll have to look at some glibc code sometime. Could be fun... or, as you point out, dismaying :-/