Assembly: what are semantic NOPs?

Question

I was wondering what are "semantic NOPs" in assembly?

Accepted Answer

Code that isn't an actual nop but doesn't affect the behavior of the program.

In C, the following sequence could be thought of as a semantic NOP:

```
{
    // Since none of these have side affects, they are effectively no-ops
    int x = 5;
    int y = x * x;
    int z = y / x;
}
```

Solution