Marc Mutz (16 July 2026 11:14) wrote:
> The current style guide¹ asks for attached braces on if statements,
> incl. when the if condition spans multiple lines (#6):
>
> // Correct
> if (address.isEmpty() || !isValid()
> || !codec) {
> return false;
> }
>
> I've been bothered by this for years, since I think this is totally
> unreadable. In particular, if the last line of the if is on the longer
> side, the body of the then branch is almost impossible to distinguish
> from a continuation of the condition.
I generally deal with that by just increasing the indentation of the
continuation lines of the condition,
if (address.isEmpty() || !isValid()
|| !codec) {
return false;
}
although, of course, the policy of putting the operator at the start of
the continuation line (of which I'll admit to not being a fan) does
mitigate the problem quite a bit, in its own right, simply because
that's an unusual way for a non-condition line to start.
I'm fairly sure Thiago has asked for such extra indent on continuations
of conditions in the past.
Of course, for very long last lines of a condition, that might hit the
right margin, but there's other ways to deal with that.
> I would therefore like to propose to allow placing the opening brace
> on a separate line if the if condition is multi-line:
>
> // (now also) Correct
> if (address.isEmpty() || !isValid()
> || !codec)
> {
> return false;
> }
>
> I have used this in the past weeks here and there, either mentioned in
> the commit message or silently, and I didn't receive any push-back.
Can't say I'm a fan.
I would probably have objected if I'd been in one of those reviews, but
maybe I was and missed it.
I do separate an open-{ from the end of a condition when there's #if-ery
involved and doing so avoids having one of it and its close-} inside
(and thus duplicated across) the #if-ery and the other not, but that's
not the case here.
> NB: this does _not_ mean that an else should use this format
>
> if (address.isEmpty() || !isValid()
> || !codec)
> {
> return false;
> }
> else // Wrong!
> {
> }
If we go ahead with your change, this looks *less wrong* to me than what
you're proposing:
> if (address.isEmpty() || !isValid()
> || !codec)
> {
> return false;
> } else { // Correct
> }
>
> ¹ https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_Coding_Style#Braces Bullets #1 and #6.
I find the asymmetry jarring.
Eddy.
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