Collaborations and Alliances

[Chris27]

As a CS student at CMU, I've always been told that

if(isSomeCondition == true) { ... }

is horrible style, and this really should be written as

if(isSomeCondition) { ... }

if(isSomeCondition = true)

Is "correct" syntax and by itself will not cause a run time error. However this will cause your program to behave incorrectly (for instance the if statement will always evaluate to true) which could definitely lead to a run time error if e.g.

if(somePtr = NULL) { ... }
else { 
  somePtr->someField = someValue;
}

I assume this is what you meant apalrd?

[apalrd]

yes, this is what I meant. There will not be a runtime error, but a bug, which is probably harder to track down then the compile error.

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Chris27

As a CS student at CMU, I've always been told that

if(isSomeCondition == true) { ... }

is horrible style, and this really should be written as

if(isSomeCondition) { ... }

I'm sooooo sorry to drag this thread off topic.

Anyway, coding style is vastly open to many opinions, and you'll find that the "preferred" method changes about as often as the direction of the wind.

The reason I quoted this is because the CMU-defined "horrible style" is required by my current employer. "if (isSomeCondition)" is against the coding standard where I work (but I prefer to do it that way in my own software outside of work).

I guess my point is that anything anyone tells you about software, take it with a grain of salt. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and that applies to software as well.