Re: [PATCH RFC] Codingstyle: allow omitting braces for all single statement branches

[Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>]

Uwe Kleine-König wrote:
> Grepping for "} else$" in v2.6.32-rc8 yields 6440 hits.  So this seems
> to be common practice and should be allowed.

Flawed reasoning.  Is this in new and otherwise stylistically
well-written code?  Or did you perhaps grep in old code or even in staging?

> checkpatch doesn't warn about both variants.

What checkpatch does/ can do, or doesn't, is only indirectly related to
good style or canonical style.

> --- a/Documentation/CodingStyle
> +++ b/Documentation/CodingStyle
> @@ -168,15 +168,23 @@ Do not unnecessarily use braces where a single statement will do.
>  if (condition)
>  	action();
>  
> -This does not apply if one branch of a conditional statement is a single
> -statement. Use braces in both branches.
> -
> -if (condition) {
> -	do_this();
> -	do_that();
> -} else {
> -	otherwise();
> -}
> +If not all branches of a conditional statement are single statements you might
> +use braces for both branches.
> +
> +	if (condition) {
> +		do_this();
> +		do_that();
> +	} else
> +		otherwise();
> +
> +or
> +
> +	if (condition) {
> +		do_this();
> +		do_that();
> +	} else {
> +		otherwise();
> +	}
>  
>  		3.1:  Spaces
>  

Either don't remove the existing paragraph, or remove it --- but do not
add your new either-or paragraph.  If you consider both variants to be
OK, you don't need to bloat the style guide by documenting them both.
There is no third or fourth alternative.
-- 
Stefan Richter
-=====-==--= =-== ==-=-
http://arcgraph.de/sr/