The way i've remembered this and it's just slightly faster than the plus minus thing is the butterfly swap or as myself and friends have dubbed it affectionately as the 'butterflizzle swizzle' x ^= y; y ^= x; x ^= y; if you know what the XOR binary operation does you can physically step through this process yourself to see just how it works. the only problem here is that if you try to swap two variables that are the same you'll find it will zero out both variables. Just do a simple if( x != y ) before you start swizzling and everything will be cool