Comments on: To Brace or not to Brace in C# ifs and other Constructs

By: Axel

Axel — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:46:03 +0000

In terms of readability and cleanliness I tend to use braces always. With current screen sizes the space used by those 2 extra lines really doesn’t matter.

However, code should be as easy to understand as possible. That being a fact, you should not override the value of ‘err’ this often.

Your example uses an ‘inverse importance’ of conditions, which makes the code harder to read.

if (myObject1==null) err = “bad1″;
if (myObject2==null) err = “bad2″;
if (myObject3==null) err = “bad3″;
if (myObject4==null) err = “bad4″;
if (myObject5==null) err = “bad5″;

The programs behaviour would be more obvious (and quicker) if you put the most relevant line on top and return right after it or skip the following conditions by returning.

if (myObject5==null)
{
err = “bad5″;
return;
}
if (myObject4==null)
{
err = “bad4″;
return;
}
if (myObject3==null)
{
err = “bad3″;
return;
}
if (myObject2==null)
{
err = “bad2″;
return;
}
if (myObject1==null)
{
err = “bad1″;
return;
}

or by using else:

if (myObject5==null) err = “bad5″
else if (myObject4==null) err = “bad4″;
else if (myObject3==null) err = “bad3″;
else if (myObject2==null) err = “bad2″;
else if (myObject1==null) err = “bad1″;

By: Dance

Dance — Mon, 16 May 2011 04:34:16 +0000

great share

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By: Why I Love the Semicolon! | PeterKellner.net

Why I Love the Semicolon! | PeterKellner.net — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:23:59 +0000

[...] so we all want to be somewhat popular, and it seems that my last article, “To Brace Or Not to Brace”, seems to have gotten a lot of attention, so, here goes my opinion on the popular semi-colon [...]

By: mongo lloyd

mongo lloyd — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:17:55 +0000

I agree with always using braces*, mostly because if I don’t, whenever I realise I have to do more than just one statement after an if (or within a for/while, etc), I have to actually reformat the code. Inserting brackets is a bit annoying to have to do. It’s not just a one-keystroke move (unless you have a really intelligent editor).

Should the code actually have to be reformatted for such a simple and common code change? I think not.

*: Except for in case blocks, where I think it is really daft and pointless. One of my pet peeves actually.

By: andyclap

andyclap — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:31:40 +0000

Most of the problems solved by consistently bracing single lines are also solved with a code beautifier.

The additional benefits of beautification (consistency, SCM diff) are enough to warrant including beautification as part of the dev process.

Now … does anybody know a beautifier as good as R# that can be invoked through nAnt?

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:19:17 +0000

I use resharper to force {} everywhere possible. I have been bitten too many times by people that write multi-line statements, but forget to add the braces. It can be quite difficult to track down these kinds of bug. I also use CodeKana which gives me a mental image of my code structure without needing to read the code (works very nicely with the {} in the code).

By: Juozas

Juozas — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:58:54 +0000

My rule of thumb is: always use braces, except when all you do is return, e.g:

if (param == null)
return false;

This rule has exceptions – if condition is complex, I use braces even for simple return statement. And I NEVER write statements in condition line.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:19:15 +0000

@Giraffe and @David: I would write it the short way, but was just making a point about it does get uglier and is that worth it.

By: Giraffe

Giraffe — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:17:36 +0000

@David,

I think rather that you should be comparing

if (myObject1==null) err = “bad1″;
if (myObject2==null) err = “bad2″;

with

if (myObject1==null) { err = “bad1″; }
if (myObject2==null) { err = “bad2″; }

By: Garry Pilkington

Garry Pilkington — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:31:48 +0000

I agree with you, it makes the code much easier to read and understand. However as soon as I put any else statements in there I judge whether it would look neater using a conditional operator. I always believe that code should be firstly understood by a human, the compiler doesn’t really care either way.

By: David Kemp

David Kemp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:26:29 +0000

so you’re saying

if (myObject1==null)
{
err = “bad1″;
}
if (myObject2==null)
{
err = “bad2″;
}

is more readable than

if (myObject1==null) err = “bad1″;
if (myObject2==null) err = “bad2″;

Have you lost your mind?

You’ll be telling me I can only have one “return” statement per function next!

By: Reflective Perspective - Chris Alcock » The Morning Brew #459

Reflective Perspective - Chris Alcock » The Morning Brew #459 — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:26:09 +0000

[...] To Brace or not to Brace in C# ifs and other Constructs – Peter Kellner asks one of the great coding style questions of all time, ‘do I have to use braces with that?’ [...]

By: Bart Czernicki

Bart Czernicki — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:29:51 +0000

could be cleaner with the ternary operator:

myObject1 == null ? err = “bad1″ : err = “something else”;

Many people code in multiple languages and even in SQL writing code like this can get you in trouble:

if (@someVariable is NULL)
err = “bad”1
err2 = “bad also”

err2 would not be under the condition and should have the begin/end (curly bracket equivelant in c#). So sticking to general good practices is a good idea.