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

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Mon Jan 2 06:25:51 CET 2012

Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> writes:

He keeps leaving [braces] out [when the block is a single statement], I occasionally tell him they should always be included (most recently this came up when we gave conflicting advice to a patch contributor).

As someone who has maintained his fair share of C code, I am firmly on the side of unconditionally (!) enclosing C statement blocks in braces regardless of how many statements they contain.

He says what he's doing is OK, because he doesn't consider the example in PEP 7 as explicitly disallowing it

I wonder if he has a stronger argument in favour of his position, because “it's not forbidden” doesn't imply “it's okay”.

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.

Agreed, it's an issue of code maintainability. Which is enough of a problem in C code that a low-cost improvement like this should always be done.

But, as someone who carries no water in the Python developer community, my opinion has no more force than the arguments, and I can't impose it on anyone. Take it for what it's worth.

-- \ “God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to | `\ explain those things that you do not understand.” —Richard P. | o_) Feynman, 1988 | Ben Finney

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