[Python-Dev] PEP 7 clarification request: braces (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon Jan 2 05:44:49 CET 2012

I've been having an occasional argument with Benjamin regarding braces in 4-line if statements:

if (cond) statement; else statement;

vs.

if (cond) { statement; } else { statement; }

He keeps leaving them out, I occasionally tell him they should always be included (most recently this came up when we gave conflicting advice to a patch contributor). He says what he's doing is OK, because he doesn't consider the example in PEP 7 as explicitly disallowing it, I think it's a recipe for future maintenance hassles when someone adds a second statement to one of the clauses but doesn't add the braces. (The only time I consider it reasonable to leave out the braces is for one liner if statements, where there's no else clause at all)

Since Benjamin doesn't accept the current brace example in PEP 7 as normative for the case above, I'm bringing it up here to seek clarification.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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