Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!gatech!ulysses!cjc
From: cjc@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com (Chris Calabrese[mav])
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Always use braces (was: Suggested new C loop syntax)
Summary: tripple ick for bad style on the part of CS profs
Message-ID: <11037@ulysses.homer.nj.att.com>
Date: 23 Dec 88 17:58:47 GMT
References: <5@rsoft.UUCP> <1071@goofy.megatest.UUCP> <861@quintus.UUCP> <271@twwells.uucp>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 44

In article <271@twwells.uucp>, bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) writes:
> In article <8@estinc.UUCP> fnf@estinc.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes:
> ...
> : I was recently helping out a freshman CS major with her C homework and
> : found out, to my horror, that the teacher in the course was marking
> : off points for code which included braces when they weren't strictly
> : required.  They were teaching her to write code like:
> :
> :       inchar = getchar ();
> :       while (inchar != EOF)
> :               if (inchar == 0)
> :                       goto done;
> :               else
> :                       inchar = getchar ();
> : done: return inchar;
> :
> : Ickkk!!!
> 
> Double Ickkkk!!!! A goto where a break would have done.

This is yet another tripple icky example of CS professors
thinking that just because they can get the example programs
in K&R to compile, and because they did work in Fortran in
their thesis on astrophysics, they are qualified to teach
C (or any other language).  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Any C guru qualified (in my humble opinion) to teach
C would be trying to teach code which looks like:

	/*
	 * assume students have not learned the ',' operator yet
	 */
	do	{
		inchar = getchar();
		} while(inchar != EOF && inchar);
	return inchar;

Personally, I haven't decided whether the while should be lined
with the do or the loop body yet, but I like the brace alignment
this way.
-- 
	Christopher J. Calabrese
	AT&T Bell Laboratories
	att!ulysses!cjc		cjc@ulysses.att.com