Do you not understand booleans?
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You are a lucky man if that's all that makes your life miserable. Some of this is awkward, especially the second example, but where exactly is the horrible part? What damage is done? Does it not work or are there possible side effects? Does it lead to worse code being generated by the compiler? I think the first two just show a clumsy coding style, but no real harm comes from it. Except, of course, curling up your toenails when you have to read it. Usually I do the last one myself. It is at least the same way you compare any other variable (if (x == 0), so why not if (flag == true)?) and I prefer to make it absolutely clear what I want to accomplish. The compiled code remains absolutely the same, no matter how you write it. That's why I see the last one more as a matter of preferences, but not as anything important.
And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.CDP1802 wrote:
t is at least the same way you compare any other variable (if (x == 0), so why not if (flag == true)?
My reasoning is you could take any boolean expression, and instead of writing
if (X)
you could write
if (X==true)
to make it really clear. But you could then also write
if ((X==true)==true)
to make it really really clear. So I'm thinking let's drop all implied trailing "==true"'s in a mental tail call optimization. ;)
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CDP1802 wrote:
t is at least the same way you compare any other variable (if (x == 0), so why not if (flag == true)?
My reasoning is you could take any boolean expression, and instead of writing
if (X)
you could write
if (X==true)
to make it really clear. But you could then also write
if ((X==true)==true)
to make it really really clear. So I'm thinking let's drop all implied trailing "==true"'s in a mental tail call optimization. ;)
And I think your reasoning would be wrong. It IS more clear to write if (X==true). Just because you don't like it does not mean it is not more clear, especially to junior programmers. I am the senior lead and I instruct ALL of our programmers under me to write if (X==true). It doesn't cost the compiler anything and it makes it understandable by even the junior most person quickly. It is all about proper maintenance and thinking about the coder behind you instead of just yourself. X is a variable so comparing it like another variable is both consistent and readable.
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This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}Wouldn't this be more run-time efficient, as the value of
updatecan be cached in a register ?void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if (update == true)
{
NeedsUpdate= update;
}
else
{
NeedsUpdate= update;
}
};->
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This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
} -
This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}I hate this code too. Maybe in C you can do this but in C# it is a travesty. What I do is create self-documenting booleans so that you write code like this:
if (DoorIsOpen)
{
// Do Something
}
else
{
// Do Something else
}I feel that this eliminates the need for any of the crap above. It is true that the compiler doesn't care but just remember the the point of code is so humans can understand it. If we only cared about the computer understanding it, we would all be typing 1s and 0s. Write code so that those who come after you can read it without being distracted by how horrible it is.
"I don't believe it." "That is why you fail." -- Empire Strikes Back Shameless blog plug - www.geekswithblogs.net/jboyer
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I know that 0 is false (or FALSE) and anything else is true (or TRUE) disappointed to read through the comments ;P ... old C++ days ... since C++ defines "true" and "false" because defines the "bool" type the trick comes around when the main function must return 0 if everything is OK :omg:
--------- Antonio
PinballWizard wrote:
the main function must return 0 if everything is OK
That's why zero should mean true. :sigh:
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And yet that style of testing for non-null is the standard in, for example, JavaScript. (Personally I have no problem with it in C either, for pointer or unsigned types ... with signed values it's bad because as pointed out someone could potentially switch negative values' interpretation out from under you.) When comparing against something which is (semantically or definitively, depending on your language) a boolean, though, there's absolutely no reason to make the reader parse more text before he can understand your statement. Adding the ' == true' provides zero clarification value, as anyone who vaguely knows the language knows that if tests check for a true value. In your example here, adding the ' != NULL' does provide a little clarification, so it's pretty much a value-neutral stylistic choice to add it or not. (Someone might suggest that NULL could evaluate to true, but anyone who makes that #define is far more culpable for any confusion than the person who writes the check you put here, and in any professional context that won't be the case.)
BobJanova wrote:
Adding the ' == true' provides zero clarification value
Exactly! Not only that, it also adds the potential for a catastrophic typo:
=trueinstead of==true. I'd even go so far as to include comparisons to user-defined symbols that represent boolean states, such asTRUEandFALSE: ifif(x)is not equivalent toif(x==TRUE), then the definitions are wrong, since they do not adhere to the rules of boolean logic! In that case not the comparison needs to be 'fixed', but the definitions! -
This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}Let's see... The first example I don't like - not for the if statement, but for the premature returns! Personally, I'd make it a one-liner, but I don't consider it all that horrible apart from the returns. The second ... well you could argue it's slightly more readable for inexperienced programmers, but if that is your purpose then you should write an
if/elsestatement, not use?:. The next is a double horror for comparing to boolean constants and unnecessary nesting, but I'd forgive the nesting for the off-chance of later maintenance introducing additional statements that depend on only the first condition. The last ... I suppose if you need to be able to run your code through really old C compilers that don't have their own built-in definitions ofbool,trueandfalse, then it makes sense not to assign one boolean variable blindly to another, but instead make anif/elsestatement to catch the case where the argument is neithertruenorfalse. But even then,==trueis horrible. So, in short, all of the examples are indeed bad style, IMHO, but I agree with the others that no harm is done, except maybe a minor hit in maintenance effort for posting it in the Hall of Shame. ;) None of this will cause inefficiency either, since compilers are smart enough to produce efficient code even from that kind of code. -
The horrors I've seen:
void setVisible(bool isVisible)
{
if(isVisible.ToString().ToLower() == "true")
{
this.Visible = true;
}if(isVisible.ToString().ToLower() == "false")
{
this.Visible = false;
}
}:wtf: You're making this up, aren't you? :omg:
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This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}They were probable taught to program by some CS grad student who'd never done much significant real-world coding. That's right along the lines of the kinds of stupidity my teachers would teach us when I was an undergrad. Like everybody else, I picked up the stupidity too.. which lasted until I saw the other way and had to debug code to a schedule that was broken by such nonsense. I still do the compare to NULL sometimes, but I believe the C standard now defines NULL pointers as a false boolean value, so it is redundant and I'm trying to retrain away from it. Besides, boost smart pointers, which we use a lot in our code, have an override to generate a bool result for just such kinds of pointer checks and make comparing the raw pointer to NULL harder.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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:wtf: You're making this up, aren't you? :omg:
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This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
} -
And it obviously makes the reader scared of what else might come from that code who's developer can't understand even a booleans...
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
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This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}Hey, you're coding in a language that I don't use, but I'm totally with you. This is one of my pet peeves, too. One of my languages is Visual FoxPro, which has the "Immediate IF" ternary function, IIF: IIF(expr, a, b) If expr is true, a is returned, otherwise b is returned. So what I see is people doing this: MyBoolVar = IIF(SomeVar = 2, .t., .f.) Which could be simplified to: MyBoolVar = SomeVar = 2 Much cleaner. Or they expand it into a regular IF statement similar to what you posted. When I see this it does worry me. If programming should result from logical thinking and a programmer has trouble understanding logical values (boolean values), then should we wonder about the rest of their skills?
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Wow - that link is worthy of a top position in the Hall of Shame all by itself! :omg:
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Yes, I suppose this simply comes from the old C++ days where there was no boolean type. To avoid side effects or compiler specific behavior, I always explicitly specified what I was testing. But I would write it like this:
if((flag1 == true) &&
(flag2 == true) &&
(flag3 == true))
{
...
}Usually it does not look so uniform. If I really had so many different flags, I would think about using a flag word and testing all flags in one go.
And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.(edit: I posted this as a reply to a message that is now now longer there, oh well) I do not write out the boolean, but I do write each condition on a new line. In addition to that, I start the new line with the operator, this way, it is very easy to see at the beginning of the line that it is a continuation of the previous line, and what the operation is:
if( flag1
&& (someOtherFlagThatWillSqrewWithTheLayout == MagicNumbers.Ten)
&& (flag3 == somethingElseCompletely))
{
...
}I use this style with anything that will make a line of code too long:
//Contrived Deep Nesting, line too long
var firstChildRow= SomeTypedDataSetWithSillyLongNameThatFillsTheEntireCodeWindow.Tables[0].ChildRelations[0].ChildTable.Rows[0];
//Broken up for readability. Note that I start with the 'dot'.
var firstChildRow= SomeTypedDataSetWithSillyLongNameThatFillsTheEntireCodeWindow
.Tables[0]
.ChildRelations[0]
.ChildTable
.Rows[0]; -
This stuff drives me up the wall!!!
bool is_queue_empty(void)
{
if (queue_length==0)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}Or this:
bool counter_zero = counter==0 ? true : false;
Or this:
if (isUDPSetup()==true)
{
if ((forceSend==false))
{
...
}
}(Variable names have been changed to protect the guilty) Or this *New one*:
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}This would be better if they returned it too. Nothing like getting back what you put into it.
bool setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
return NeedsUpdate;
} -
void setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
}This would be better if they returned it too. Nothing like getting back what you put into it.
bool setNeedsUpdate(bool update)
{
if ((update==true))
NeedsUpdate=true;
else
NeedsUpdate=false;
return NeedsUpdate;
}The second is better than the first. At least if you're going to set the value in this ridiculous fashion, make sure that it worked. :)
I wasn't, now I am, then I won't be anymore.
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Yes, I suppose this simply comes from the old C++ days where there was no boolean type. To avoid side effects or compiler specific behavior, I always explicitly specified what I was testing. But I would write it like this:
if((flag1 == true) &&
(flag2 == true) &&
(flag3 == true))
{
...
}Usually it does not look so uniform. If I really had so many different flags, I would think about using a flag word and testing all flags in one go.
And from the clouds a mighty voice spoke:
"Smile and be happy, for it could come worse!"And I smiled and was happy
And it came worse.I came from the same dark ages and indeed untill some time ago i also had the tendency to check the boolean value. Particularly the BOOL was a nasty one as you could (with good sense) only check that to FALSE. One other 'trick' i got used to apply was swapping the variable and the value E.g.
if(FALSE != flag)
{Logically this seems a bit odd but then again it did protect me against typo's like:
if( flag = FALSE)
{Today this will generate a compiler warning but that has not always been the case and if you have a special vendor type compiler; you may still face the same. Why check on FALSE? Simple; that was defined (as 0), any one could set the BOOL to TRUE, 1, 2 etc. Don't you love the compilers of today? Or better yet, those of tomorrow? Cheers, AT
Cogito ergo sum
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CDP1802 wrote:
why not if (flag == true)?
Indeed, I prefer that when writing in C. One thing that drives me nuts with C is reading things like:
char* s = ...
if ( s ) ...
:mad: