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

Tres Seaver tseaver at palladion.com
Mon Jan 2 21:25:00 CET 2012

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On 01/02/2012 01:02 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

On Mon, Jan 2, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Scott Dial <scott+python-dev at scottdial.com> wrote:

On 1/1/2012 11:44 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

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)

Could you explain how these two cases differ with regard to maintenance? Sure: always including K&R style braces for compound statements (even when they aren't technically necessary) means that indentation == control flow, just like Python. Indent your additions correctly, and the reader and compiler will agree on what they mean: if (cond) { statement; } else { statement; addition; /* Reader and compiler agree this is part of the else clause */ } if (cond) statement; else statement; addition; /* Uh-oh, should have added braces */ I've been trying to convince Benjamin that there's a reason "always include the braces" is accepted wisdom amongst many veteran C programmers (with some allowing an exception for one-liners), but he isn't believing me, and I'm not going to go through and edit every single one of his commits to add them.

FWIW, +1 to mandating braces-always (even for one liners): the future maintenance burden isn't worth the trouble of the exception. In the days when I did C / C++ / Java coding as my main gig, braceless code was routinely a bug magnet for the team.

Tres. - --

Tres Seaver +1 540-429-0999 tseaver at palladion.com Palladion Software "Excellence by Design" http://palladion.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

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