Re: how to make a macro work as a single line if stmt without braces

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> wrote:

On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 21:53:06 -0700
Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 28 Sep 2024 05:02:05 -0700
Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> wrote:

Andrey Tarasevich <andreytarasevich@hotmail.com> writes:

[...]

And don't use "Egyptian" braces [the style used in the
first edition of The C Programming Language, by Kernighan
and Ritchie].

This is the proper formatting style with braces

  if (failed)
  {
    ...
  }
  else
  {
    ...
  }

The vertical spacing introduced by the `{` line provides
separation between condition and the branch, which makes
your code much more readable.  [...] 

What qualities does this layout style have that make it "more
readable", other than it being one that you like or prefer? 

{ at the same level of indentation as its matching } 

Certainly it is true that the layout style shown has the open
brace at the same level of indentation as the matching close
brace.  What about that property makes this layout "more
readable"?  The statement given sounds like a tautology -
I don't see that any new information has been added.

It makes it easier to see where block starts and where it ends. Opening
{ followed by empty line is more bold visually than 'if something { ' or
then '} else {'.

Now, I can live with both styles, but can see why many people prefer
style advocated by Andrey.

I think it objectively true that superfluous compound statements and
opening braces on lines of their own make code less readable.  Not by a
lot, but by enough.

The reason is that people are not struggling to read individual
statements (apart from raw beginners), they are struggling to read a
whole program.  With the lots-of-blank-lines styles advocated by some,
less of a program will fit on a screen than with more economical styles.
That means more scrolling up and down to see what should be closely
related parts of the program.

This is more true of modern IDEs, where only a small part of the screen
is devoted to the program text, than good text editors.  For example, in
Emacs (using Follow Mode) I can get 195 consecutive lines displayed
legibly and usably on my screen at once.  But even with that, having
superfluous vertical space occasionally makes me have to scroll.

At a high level of abstraction, what makes code difficult to understand
and debug is having to look somewhere else.  The
superfluous-vertical-space styles increase that difficulty, if only a
little.

--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).