Do Empty spaces/text slow down code?

[Jarfi]

If you are say running a for-loop with 5000 cycles, will 2 empty spaces and say 3-comments slow this operation down?

 

[jedishrfu]

In general, no.

There are two methods of execution compile and run where code is converted to machine code and then run. This is the fastest option used for C/C++, Fortran...

The second method is interpretive where each line is tokenized and the tokens are processed and run:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreter_(computing)

If your spaces were within quotes and were being printed each time then that would slow things down very very slightly. The more data you process the longer it takes a program to run.

However, in interpretive or compiled languages the spaces are removed from consideration as the code is converted to a more executable format.