OpenEuphoria

1. Please DON'T do that

• Posted by petelomax Feb 19, 2015
• 1642 views

Forked from Re: Try/Catch

While technically it may work in the short term, if it damages intent or readability in any way it is not a good idea.

if x then ought really be reserved for when x is a boolean that can only be true or false¹.

Simply having !=0 somewhere in the code can act as a reminder that it has special and/or other meaning.

In many cases it is -1 rather than "not 0" that you need to look out for anyway.

I don't equate the three characters !=0 with "lots of typing".

Should your compiler emit lower quality code when it hits a !=0, get a better compiler.

If anything I'd say "add !=0", selectively, to clarify intent.

Pete

¹ alright, if length(x) then is I suppose a notable exception that breaks that rule.

3. Re: Please DON'T do that

• Posted by ghaberek (admin) Feb 19, 2015
• 1582 views

Agreed. To the casual observer it may seem verbose, but to anyone concerned with the operation of the code, adding these specific checks aids in readability and understanding.

A better way to (probably) accomplish this to have an is_error() function for testing the result. The code can be more easily read aloud to convey its operation.

function is_error( atom result ) 
    return (result != 0) -- zero = success, not zero = failure 
end function 

And then...

atom result = do_something() 
if is_error( result ) then 
    -- failure 
end if 

or...

atom result = do_something() 
if not is_error( result ) then 
    -- success 
end if 

etc.

-Greg