[Python-Dev] PEP 7 clarification request: braces

[Matt Joiner]

FWIW I'm against forcing braces to be used. Readability is the highest
concern, and this should be at the discretion of the contributor. A
code formatting tool, or compiler extension is the only proper handle
this, and neither are in use or available.

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 7:44 PM, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>> He keeps leaving them out, I occasionally tell him they should always
>> be included (most recently this came up when we gave conflicting
>> advice to a patch contributor). He says what he's doing is OK, because
>> he doesn't consider the example in PEP 7 as explicitly disallowing it,
>> I think it's a recipe for future maintenance hassles when someone adds
>> a second statement to one of the clauses but doesn't add the braces.
>> (The only time I consider it reasonable to leave out the braces is for
>> one liner if statements, where there's no else clause at all)
>
> While this appears to be settled, I'd like to add that I sided with
> Benjamin here all along.
>
> With Python, I accepted a style of "minimal punctuation". Examples
> of extra punctuation are:
> - parens around expression in Python's if (and while):
>
>    if (x < 10):
>      foo ()
>
> - parens around return expression (C and Python)
>
>    return(*p);
>
> - braces around single-statement blocks in C
>
> In all these cases, punctuation can be left out without changing
> the meaning of the program.
>
> I personally think that a policy requiring braces would be (mildly)
> harmful, as it decreases readability of the code. When I read code,
> I read every character: not just the identifiers, but also every
> punctuation character. If there is extra punctuation, I stop and wonder
> what the motivation for the punctuation is - is there any hidden
> meaning that required the author to put the punctuation?
>
> There is a single case where I can accept extra punctuation in C:
> to make the operator precedence explicit. Many people (including
> myself) don't know how
>
>   a | b << *c * *d
>
> would group, so I readily accept extra parens as a clarification.
>
> Wrt. braces, I don't share the concern that there is a risk of
> somebody being confused when adding a second statement to a braceless
> block. An actual risk is stuff like
>
>   if (cond)
>     MACRO(argument);
>
> when MACRO expands to multiple statements. However, we should
> accept that this is a bug in MACRO (which should have used the
> do-while(0)-idiom), not in the application of the macro.
>
> Regards,
> Martin
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