Hacker News Reader

Comment by tom_mellior | Hacker News Reader

Ugh.

    for (i = 0; i < sizeof love / sizeof *love; i++)
        if (love[i] < 4)
            printf("%s", say[love[i]]);
        else
            for (j = 0; j < love[i] / 4; j++)
                putchar(show[love[i] % 4]);

Yes, C doesn't force you to use braces here, but this is really overdoing it.

And I say this as someone who does like Python's indentation-based syntax. Doing the same in C is not idiomatic.

View on HN

I'm sorry but I have to point out the irony in showing so much disgust about a few lines of code that happen to literally say "I love you."

The content is completely irrelevant, s/he only showed dislike of the indentation with which I disagree. What does it matter whether or not it says "I love you"? Should we not be able to criticize any other aspects of code when it prints or displays something positive?

Give criticism, sure, but keep some civility too. It's Valentine's Day! Be kind.

How was he not civil? Was it the "ugh" part?

Yeah, well... I am lonely. :(

That's the same style in K&R, which is about as "idiomatic" as it gets. I don't see anything wrong with it.

What's wrong with it is that it's really really easy to make a mistake and introduce a subtle bug that will be hard to spot. Especially now since languages like python have been developed that have made people used to indentation-defined code.

It's the style in K&R? Ok, so the literal inventor of the language was certain he wouldn't make this kind of mistake, that still doesn't mean I trust myself not to.

Omitting braces for single statements is quite idiomatic in the C development world, whether we like it or not. If we don't trust ourselves that we wouldn't make this kind of mistake, use the right tooling: 'gcc -Wall' (since GCC 6) or 'clang-format' can easily detect misleading indentation.

I don't have a copy of K&R handy, but I feel like I would remember if it really had an example like this nested three levels deep. I would be grateful if someone could check.

§ 1.5.3 Line Counting

  #include <stdio.h>

  /* count lines in input */
  main()
  {
      int c, nl;
      nl = 0;
      while ((c = getchar()) != EOF)
          if (c == '\n')
              ++nl;
      printf("%d\n", nl);
  }

§ 1.5.4 Word Counting

  #include <stdio.h>

  #define IN   1  /* inside a word */
  #define OUT  0  /* outside a word */

  /* count lines, words, and characters in input */
  main()
  {
      int c, nl, nw, nc, state;

      state = OUT;
      nl = nw = nc = 0;
      while ((c = getchar()) != EOF) {
          ++nc;
          if (c == '\n')
              ++nl;
          if (c == ' ' || c == '\n' || c == '\t')
              state = OUT;
          else if (state == OUT) {
              state = IN;
              ++nw;
          }
      }
      printf("%d %d %d\n", nl, nw, nc);
  }

Also, see § 1.6 Arrays, § 2.8 Increment and Decrement Operators, etc.

By the way, I would always use brace while working on a team project where there are other developers involved. But this is a one-time, personal, and hobby project where I am the only developer and I prefer to choose the K&R style when nobody else is involved.

Wow, that was quick, thanks. Though the first example is only two levels deep and also less complex than your code in question, which has a loop in the else part of an if in a loop...

The second example uses braces (as it must), so it's not an example of what I was asking for.

Okay, I was counting the nesting depth incorrectly. Here are a few more examples:

§ 3.8 Goto and labels

  found = 0;
  for (i = 0; i < n && !found; i++)
      for (j = 0; j < m && !found; j++)
          if (a[i] == b[j])
              found = 1;

  if (found)
      /* got one: a[i-1] == b[j-1] */
      ...
  else
      /* didn't find any common element */

§ 6.3 Arrays of Structures

  /* count C keywords */
  main()
  {
      int n;
      char word[MAXWORD];

      while (getword(word, MAXWORD) != EOF)
          if (isalpha(word[0]))
              if ((n = binsearch(word, keytab, NKEYS)) >= 0)
                  keytab[n].count++;
      for (n = 0; n < NKEYS; n++)
          if (keytab[n].count > 0)
              printf("%4d %s\n",
                  keytab[n].count, keytab[n].word);
      return 0;
  }

Thanks. I still find these a bit more palatable than your loop-in-an-else-in-a-loop (there are no elses and no loops inside ifs here), but yeah, I can imagine that K&R might have written it the same way as you did.

The second example does lack braces in two nested 'if' statements. Did you ignore that? Granted it is not three levels deep and granted there is a brace in the 'else' part but that's no reason to ignore the fact that K&R does in fact omit the braces for nested 'if-else' statements.

Demanding now that the nesting has to be less than three levels deep to omit braces is just moving the goalposts.

> nested 'if-else' statements

Yeah, "else if" is a special case where I wouldn't put braces even if I prefer them everywhere else.

> Demanding now that the nesting has to be less than three levels deep

I specifically asked for a three levels before, in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19162933, not "now".

Your original critique from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19161365 said this:

> Yes, C doesn't force you to use braces here, but this is really overdoing it.

It said nothing about nesting level depth. The question of nesting level appeared later in a child comment of yours which I believe is moving the goalposts. Sorry, I didn't make this clear in my previous comment.

Having said that, I do agree with you that braces are helpful. But then, we should all decide the pants policy in our own homes: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/nodejs/MWaivVTirPY/0pnRjKsgg...

And no unit tests or CI either? This is how rockets and hearts end up in pieces!

Good thing we can indicate our love with persnickety comments and have no need for such a program.

There is no love, only unit testing and coding style debates.

Hmm, I can have debates while maintaining my love for that person with whom I am having a debate!

I coded like this when I was self taught and then in college. Once I got my first programming job and started fixing other people's bugs that the braces would have avoided, I stopped doing this.

I used to code like that for a long time so it doesn't bother me too much. Then I started learning Rust (which uses a C-style syntax but makes braces mandatory ever for single statements) and I started doing it even in C. In hindsight I feel stupid for not doing it earlier, it doesn't add too much noise (at least if you put the opening brace on the same line) and it wards off many potential nasty bugs if you copy code around or use poorly written macros.

My rule has always been that if you're going to write a single line if-statement it should actually be a single line if-statement, i.e. no line break between the condition and the curly bracket.

Don't see how.

It's exactly as you might see in K&R, and short enough that there's never going to be confusion from their lack.

Just very clear code.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com