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From: Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: how to make a macro work as a single line if stmt without braces
Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2024 14:54:52 -0700
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Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:
> On 09/21/24 1:47 AM, David Brown wrote:
>> You should get in the habit of being consistent with braces, and
>> being generous with them.  Your future self with thank you.
>> if (failed) {
>>      WARN("failed because...");
>> } else {
>>      ok++;
>> }
>> 
>
> Nope. There's absolutely no reason to overuse braces.

Plenty of C programmers, myself included, disagree with this.

One reason to "overuse" braces is that you can easily add another
statement.  If you write:

    if (failed)
         WARN("failed because...");
    else
         ok++;

and later decide you need two statements in the else clause, you then
need to add braces.  If they're already there, you don't.

> And don't use "Egyptian" braces. The latter is actually an
> ill-begotten attempt to remedy the damage from the former. Just stop
> overusing braces, and there'll be no need for the remedy. Easy.
>
> This is the proper formatting style with braces
>
>   if (failed)
>   {
>     ...
>   }
>   else
>   {
>     ...
>   }

Again, many, perhaps most, C programmers will disagree with this.

What you call "Egyptian" braces is the style used by the creators of the
language and in a *lot* of open source software.  Even if you don't like
the style, you'll need to deal with it.

I have my own fairly strong preferences about brace placement, but the
most important rule is to follow the conventions of the code I'm working
on.

[...]

>> Thus :
>>      if (failed) return -1;        // Early exit
>> or
>>      if (!failed) ok++;
>> Otherwise, put in all the braces.
>
> Nope. Do not ever write single-line `if` statements. This is a major
> impediment to step-by-step debugging.

I've rarely run into that problem.  When I have, it's been easy enough
to temporarily modify the code.

-- 
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */