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djberg96 (2603)

djberg96
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Journal of djberg96 (2603)

Thursday November 11, 2004
12:17 PM

C coding style change

[ #21810 ]
In the past, including the very recent past, I have always used brackets for my C "if-else" conditions, even if there was only a single line within the if clause.

if(some_condition){
   printf("Whatever\n");
}

I guess it was just a combination of paranoia, preference, and anticipation of adding additional code within the if condition that led me to code this way.

I've had a change of heart. This morning. At 10:12 am to be precise. Suddenly, it just started to annoy the crap out of me. I realize I have to pay a little extra attention to detail by omitting the brackets, but I suddenly like the 'no-bracket' style better.

if(some_condition)
   printf("Whatever\n");

/me shrugs


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  • Don't bring that code my way!
    • Heh. Well, the functions where I'm doing this are generally short. For larger functions I'd probably be more inclined to keep the brackets.

      The main problem I have with people using this style is that they don't indent or space worth a darn. That can get real confusing, real quick. That's probably another reason I've avoided it in the past.

      • Just because a feature can be misused - doesn't mean it should be misused (we Perl hackers know it best of all...). The "no bracket" single statement "if" is in C for a reason - and AFAIK it is considered good style to use it. With proper indentation, the problems you may run into become blazingly obvious. In 6 years of C experience, I've never had a bug resulting from this feature.

  • Some day you'll be skimming code that's passed through the fingers of someone who had their tabs set to an unusual number of spaces, and something like

        if (somecondition)
            printf("Whatever\n");
            dosomethingelse();
    will go flying by. Are you sure you'll read it correctly?
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