Comment on Whitespace

GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• darkpanda@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I also sometimes wish that the syntax in if statements was inverted, where () was optional and {} was required.

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  • CodexArcanum@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Rust makes this choice and it is way better.

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  • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Based

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  • clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Cab you give me an example? I’m not sure I follow. Might be language specific?

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    • noli@programming.dev ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      if(condition) statement; Is valid in typical C-style syntax.

      if condition { … }

      Is invalid in typical C-style syntax

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      • clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Gotcha, thanks.

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    • darkpanda@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The code in the image is C or C++ or similar. In those languages and languages derived from them, curly braces are optional but the parentheses are required. It should be the other way around to avoid logic errors like this:

      if (some expression)
        doSomething()
      else if (some other expression)
        printf(“some debugging code that’s only here temporarily”);
        doSomethingElse();
      

      Based on the indentation you’d think that doSomethingElse was only meant to run if the else if condition was true, but because of the lack of braces and the printf it actually happens regardless of either of the if conditions. This can sometimes lead to logic errors and it doesn’t hold up to a principle of durability under edit — that is, inserting some code into the if statement changes the outcome entirely because it changes the code path entirely, so the code is in a sense fragile to edits. If the curly braces were required instead of optional, this wouldn’t happen.

      I have all of my linters set up to flag a lack of curly braces in these languages as an error because of this. It’s a topic that sometimes causes some debate, ‘cause some people will vociferously defend their right to not have the braces there for one liners and more compact code, but if have found that in general having the, be required consistently has led to fewer issues than having arguments about their absence, but to each their own. I know many big projects that have the opposite stance or have other guidelines, but I just make ‘em required on my own projects or projects that I’m in charge of and be done with it.

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      • clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That makes perfect sense, thank you.

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• Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Having assignments return a value is right up there as well.

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  • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because of the possibility of accidentally performing an assignment in a conditional expression?

    If yes, I agree that it’s not great.

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    • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, exactly that.

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