Thread: just wondering

This could be used for sorting, for example

axon

"and i was wondering what you would need that for?"

The code in your example switches the values in a and b. Let's say you started out with:

a=5
b=10

and you wanted to switch the values. If you tried this:

a=b;
b=a;

the first statement would assign 10 to a, so you would have:

a=10
b=10

The second statement assigns a to b, and since a=10, you assign 10 to b, so you have:

a=10
b=10

So, in the end were you able to switch the values? No, you wanted to end up with:

a=10
b=5

To switch values in two variables, you have to create a temp variable because your first assignment is going to overwrite the value in that variable and it will be lost forever unless you assign the value to temp first.

temp = a; ----->temp=5, a=5, b=10
a=b; ---------->temp=5, a=10, b=10
b=temp-------->temp=5, a=10, b=5