[Misiur]

You are worrying too much too early. Unless you notice that it's a bottleneck, I would not worry about it. However if you want more readable code, I'd go with

pawn Code:

new
    total = 10,
    peak = total / 2
;

for(new i = 0; i < total; i++) 
{
    new j = i;
    if (i >= peak) {
        j = total - i;
    }

    printf("%i", j); 
}