Having an asterisk both be the type indicator and the dereference operator is one of the great programming language design blunders of our time, along with allowing nulls for any type in so many languages.
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 elseif 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 I have found that in general having them 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.
Having an asterisk both be the type indicator and the dereference operator is one of the great programming language design blunders of our time, along with allowing nulls for any type in so many languages.
I also sometimes wish that the syntax in
ifstatements was inverted, where()was optional and{}was required.Rust makes this choice and it is way better.
Based
Can you give me an example? I’m not sure I follow. Might be language specific?
if(condition) statement; Is valid in typical C-style syntax.
if condition { … }
Is invalid in typical C-style syntax
Gotcha, thanks.
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
doSomethingElsewas only meant to run if theelse ifcondition was true, but because of the lack of braces and theprintfit actually happens regardless of either of theifconditions. 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 theifstatement 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 I have found that in general having them 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.
That makes perfect sense, thank you.
Having assignments return a value is right up there as well.
Because of the possibility of accidentally performing an assignment in a conditional expression?
If yes, I agree that it’s not great.
Yeah, exactly that.