Re: [v4l-dvb-maintainer] [PULL] http://linuxtv.org/hg/~mcisely/pvrusb2

From: Bill Davidsen
Date: Fri Sep 05 2008 - 16:47:47 EST


Mike Isely wrote:

If you need this kind of safety measures against errors in future code
changes, could it be that you have some general QA problems?

That's always a problem with humans in the loop. I very much agree that one line or three is far safer against a hasty line insertion than only two.

In my own code I write one if it fits, three if it doesn't. Being easy to read is good, being hard to misread is better.

One of the points behind a good coding style is that it should encourage code that is robust against trivial mistakes. Prefering

if (a) {
b;
}

over

if (a)
b;

I consider to be an example of this kind of simple safety. (And I have in the past seen people getting burned from the obvious error of sticking a debug printf in between.) ACTUALLY, I'd much, much rather prefer

if (a) b;

however checkpatch.pl gets angry about that as well (even though the kernel CodingStyle document would seem to actually allow this - it's still one statement and since "b" is outside the normal flow then it's "something to hide" and should be ok in any case).


(However, why waste time arguing over braces or not?)

Tell that to those who would use checkpatch.pl to gate incoming changesets.


--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot

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