1st, the code you refer to is not part of MFC, this is the implementation of standard C++ library that comes with VC. 2nd, these are templates. Declaration and definition of template classes should completely be in header files to be visible to compiler in producing concrete types (instantiation). 3rd, this is not even wrote by Microsoft - it was written by P.J. Plauger (and sold to Microsoft). I agree it could easily won some prizes on "obfuscated C++" contest :-D

Then I'm really sorry for everyone whose code you get to review... John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: it closes the handle (if the handle was created). :confused: This how we started - use destructor(s) for releasing/closing.

toxcct wrote: have you ever heard or break keyword ? Are you sure that you know how break works? It wouldn't really do the trick in this case...

You are not really trying to convince me thaterror myroutine(){ HFILE hFile = NULL; error = success; if ((hFile = CreateFile(...))) { ReadFile(...); if (dwRead) { WriteFile(...); if (!dwWritten) { error = write; } } else { error = read; } CloseHandle(hFile); } else { error = create; } return error; }
is more readable and maintainable than:error myroutine(){ File f; if(!f.Create(...)) return create; if(!f.Read(...)) return read; if(!f.Write(...)) return write; return success; }

John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: No goto's, no fake loops, the calling function can always programatically respond to the "error" reported by the function, and it's more maintainable by new employees. But so many unnecessary else's certainly lower readability of code. If you use destructor(s) for releasing you would just return proper error immediately. John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I've never seen a valid reason to ghave goto's in a c++ function, and I've been doing C++ for 14 years. How do you exit from multiple loops? for(something){ for(something else){ if(something wrong) goto exitloop; // how else? do useful stuff } } exitloop: