Re: constant string array

[Jeff Carter <jrcarter@acm.org>]

"Beard, Frank" wrote:
> > Such people frequently do other irritating things,
> > like putting unnecessary parentheses around the
> > condition of an if
> 
> To me this is a non-issue.  Use them, don't use
> them.  Who cares?  I don't care so long as they don't
> decrease readability.  But, definitely use them
> if they increase readability, as in making precedence
> clearer, or dealing with compound statements containing
> multiple "or else" and "and then".  Or should I say
> (or else) and (and then).  :-)

I put this in mostly because Robert Dewar, who thinks the "if" form is
clearer, in another post objected to the unnecessary parentheses.

I like parentheses whenever they make things clearer. Sometimes this
includes unnecessary parentheses, as in

-(2 ** 31)

for those who don't remember the precedence rules. However, when they
don't even do that, they make me pause to see why the writer thought
parentheses are necessary. Since they aren't, the effect is to make the
code more difficult for me to read.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"You brightly-colored, mealy-templed, cranberry-smelling, electric
donkey-bottom biters."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail