Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!rutgers!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sgi!arisia!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Efficient coding considered harmful?
Message-ID: <667@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 11 Nov 88 10:12:12 GMT
References: <3105@hubcap.UUCP> <34112@XAIT.XEROX.COM> <1700@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <7700@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <764@wsccs.UUCP>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 17

In article <764@wsccs.UUCP> terry@wsccs.UUCP (Every system needs one) writes:
>if statements should look like:
>
>	if( expression operator expression)
>rather than
>	if (expressionoperatorexpression)
>
>which can break old compilers with either the space after the if or

WHAT?  I've used C under UNIX since version 6+, and various VM/CMS,
8086, and VMS C compilers, and I've _never_ run into one with THAT
bug!  The rule that I use is that "things which are similar should
look similar, things which are different should look different";
if statements are not function calls, so they shouldn't look like
them.  Say "squodge 'if' up to the '(' and confuse the h--- out of
readers because I _like_ it that way", but don't say that compilers
were ever allowed to _demand_ it.