That's advice borne from a lifetime of programming C. Good catch about the !, but that was just as an example of the form, not meant as a cut-and-paste replacement.
Both ways have some merit. Cuddled curly is good for ismple one-liners. Curly on next line is when the statement header is stuffed with multi-line expressions.
After all the years, I have settled on:
while (simple) {
}
while ((big || complex)
(condition && multiple && lines))
{
}
for (i = 0; i < MAX; i++) {
}
for (big_initialization;
big && step;
complex, increment++)
{
}The only way a single line deletion that contains curly braces will still compile is if it contains balanced curly braces:
if (cond)
{ foo }
stmt;
Regardless of bracing style, we can easily find lines in a program which can be deleted without causing a compile error, just not ones which open a syntax without closing it and vice versa.
Try not to randomly delete lines from your program, and inspect your "git diff" or what have you should such a thing happen.
The code is a bit terse due to a mechanical issue - my current laptop screen only gives me about 25 lines vertically.