vade retro Pascal - redundant parentheses revisited
Werner Almesberger
werner at almesberger.net
Tue Oct 22 15:30:08 EDT 2013
Paul Boddie wrote:
> good_to_go = (a > 10) || (a == 0);
warning: redundant parentheses
> /* Some time later... */
>
> if (good_to_go) ...
Breaking down complex expressions is often a good idea to improve
readability. The compiler usually doesn't care anyway - a modern
compiler would usually turn something like
if ((a > 10) || (a == 0))
...
into a canonical format maybe like
v1 = a;
v2 = v1 > 10;
v3 = a;
v4 = v3 == 0;
v5 = v2 || v4;
if (v5) ...
and then it will filter out all the redundancy.
The version with storing to good_to_go would become
...
good_to_go = v5;
v6 = good_to_go;
if (v6) ...
If "good_to_go" is local and no pointer to it exists, the compiler
will find out quickly enough that it can remove it.
> featuring some kind of cartoon figure showing off different code
> examples, soliciting audience opinions, and then demonstrating that the code
> doesn't behave at all as they would expect. I think it was a PDF.
Sounds like fun :)
- Werner
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