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From: Stephan Wilms <Stephan.Wilms@CWA.de>
Subject: Re: Coding for Obscurity
Date: 1997/11/20
Message-ID: <34741AAF.1C7@CWA.de>#1/1
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References: <343fbb5a.0@news.iprolink.ch> <34466EB4.3381@dynamite.com.au>
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Organization: CWA GmbH
Reply-To: Stephan.Wilms@CWA.de
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Date: 1997-11-20T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Alan E & Carmel J Brain wrote:
> 
> firewind wrote:
> 
> > I find myself using a construct like this a lot recently (snipped directly
> > from code I'm working on right now):
> >
> > if(!to && !(to = malloc(sizeof *to)))) return(NULL);
> >
> > The
> > if(foo() || bar())
> >
> > construct may seem obfuscated and weird to you, it is the way the logic of
> > some people's minds work.
> 
> No further evidence, I rest my case.
> 
> Would anyone in comp.lang.c like to comment?

Yes, I'll volunteer a little comment: code like that has a lot of
disadvantages: it is obfuscated (it's only the author wh thinks that
the code is readable) and it's hard to debug and maintain. It sure
wouldn't pass through my code inspection.

To explain: readability of code is not targeted at the author of the
code or maybe his office pal, it is targeted at someone having to
read and understand a whole big package of source code, to make
some important modification or to find a bug a year after the software
has been written and archived. The author might not even be available
at this moment. Even the smallest effort helps a lot.

In detail: I would reqrite the first example like this:

    /* Sensible comment about what get's allocated. */
  if ( to == NULL )
  {
    to = malloc( sizeof *to);
    if ( to == NULL ) return NULL;
  }

Stephan
(initiator of the campaign against grumpiness in c.l.c)