I was browsing these PHP Coding Guidelines (a bit outdated but very interesting), and found this:
Condition Format
Always put the constant on the left hand side of an
equality/inequality comparison. For example: if ( 6 == $errorNum ) ...
One reason is that if you leave out one of the = signs, the parser
will find the error for you. A second reason is that it puts the value
you are looking for right up front where you can find it instead of
buried at the end of your expression. It takes a little time to get
used to this format, but then it really gets useful.
I have been using ($var == 6) for years now and the idea of putting them the other way around is horrifying. But as mentioned, this takes a bit time to get used to and is supposed to have clear benefits. We are just writing up standard at our company so if we want to change this, this is the moment to do that. But I'd like to hear if other have experience with this particular format. Any opinions?
EDIT
I am interested in people's experience with making this switch. To me, and most likely to others, this looks like a big change that you need to get used to. But it looks interesting. So the question to those who have switched: can you recommend this change?
6 == $var has a real advantage that $var == 6 does not. There is nothing horrifying about it at all, it just looks different. You should get used to it and use it. In fact, I haven't gotten used to it yet and I forget about it frequently. You really have to think about it and use it since the opposite is so common.
The advantage, in case you didn't know, is to prevent simple syntactical mistakes, thus:
if ($var = 6) {} //weird semantic error
if (6 = $var) {} //parse error
Related
I'm pretty sure that there is no difference between this
if ($value === true)
and this
if (true === $value)
For me it always seems confusing. I used to think that it's a 'bad unconventional style of new developers'. Furthermore, my boss told me never to do such a thing.
But today I was looking through Slim's source code, written by the guy who created PHP: The Right Way, and saw this (line 341).
if (true === $value) {
$c['settings'] = array_merge_recursive($c['settings'], $name);
}
I'm sure a guy like Josh Lockhart wouldn't do something like this if it was considered a bad practice. So what's with this order? Is it some kind of an old tradition?
This is colloquially referred to as 'Yoda Conditions'. The reasoning behind their usage is because sometimes people make mistakes. In the context of an if statement, this is one such mistake that is sometimes made:
if($value = 42)
Notice there is no double equals sign (==). This is a valid statement and is not a syntax error. It is possible that it would cause huge disruptions with the code that follows it, and it is very hard to identify quickly. Yoda conditions get around this by reversing the conditional expression:
if(42 = $value)
This is not a valid statement and is a syntax error, and those are generally reported with a line number included, so they're pretty easy to find.
"Syntax error you have. Line 73 do something else you must." -- Yoda's compiler, probably
Whether or not you actually think they're good or bad is up to personal preference and style. In some cases of popular frameworks (such as Wordpress), Yoda conditions are actually part of the official coding standards. The major critique against them is that, to some, they decrease readability of the code without providing any real major benefit.
As #MonkeyZeus pointed out in a comment to the question, sometimes people do actually mean to only use a single equals sign inside of an if condition:
if($iMustHaveAValue = functionCallThatCanFail()) {
// Rest assured, $iMustHaveAValue has a truthy value.
}
Since the value of an assignment operation is the value assigned, the value that is evaluated by the if condition in this case (and in the original case which was unintended) is whatever value happened to be assigned.
Give me one good reason to do this
if( isset($_GET['key']) && ($_GET['key'] === '123') )
{...
instead of this
if( #$_GET['key'] === '123' )
{...
I'm asking for this very specific code case, and not in general!
Following reasons are not welcome:
"using # will slow down the application by some nanoseconds because the
error is created anyway (even if it's supressed)." Well I prefer slower
code but more readable.
"using # is bad habit." It might be true in general, but I don't belive in this case (moreover bad habits might
depend on the context, on PHP manual in function like fopen they
suggest to use # in certain circumstainces, see Errors/Exceptions
at http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fopen.php)
The performance impact isn't actually the best argument against this example and you would have to measure the performance in your own application to decide whether this is a problem. It is more likely to cause a slow down if a large number of items being checked are not set or if you placed a check such as this within a loop.
The main problem associated with using the # operator is that it is likely to become a convention in your code, so while your example may seem innocuous, you may later find yourself or your team using:
if( #IsAvailable() ) {
And the error suppression starts to hide real errors that you didn't anticipate as well as those that you did - and you have no idea what happened as you get no exception information at all.
Think about how much you could be slowing your application down when your website / app starts getting tens / hundreds of thousands (or more) of requests a day. If you're suppressing errors as a standard, you probably have dozens for every request - suddenly, you're site is noticeably slower than you would want it to be.
In addition to this, you could end up suppressing errors that you actually want to be aware of while developing.
If you don't take performance issue as argument, then it is indeed OK. But it does not has to be in all cases, because # will supress all possible errors, even those, you did not think about. But in this case, it seems there are not possible other errors that the one you want to supress.
I agree with you that preceed isset() before reading value is very ugly and I don't like to write it either. But insert # before statement seems ugly to mee to. It can decrease readibility in longer code.
Good news is, that since PHP 7 we can use much nicer way, null-coalescence operator ?? which works like this:
if($_GET['key'] ?? '' === '123' ) {}
It is basically replacement for this:
$result = isset($value) ? $value : $anotherValue;
now you can use
$result = $value ?? $anotherValue;
What is the benefit of using multiple steps to test variables:
$VarLength = strlen($message);
if ($VarLength > 10)
echo "Over Ten";
...versus just pushing the whole process into one if statement:
if ( strlen($message) > 10 )
echo "Over Ten";
I'm wondering if the benefits go beyond code style, and the ability to re-use the results of the (in the example above) strlen result.
Your question is not really possible to answer technically, so this is more a comment than an answer.
Benefits beyond code-style and re-use of the result is when you change the code.
You might want to replace the strlen() function with some other function but you don't want to edit the line with the if clause while you do so. E.g. to prevent errors or side-effects. That could be a benefit, however it depends on code-style somehow. So as you exclude coding style from your question, it makes it hard to answer as that domain touches a lot how you can/should/would/want/must write code.
If the result of a function will be used multiple times, it should be cached in a variable so as to obviate the need to waste resources to re-calculate its result.
If the function result won't be re-used, it can simply be a matter of code readability to clearly delineate what's happening by storing the function return value in a variable before using it in an if condition.
Also, in terms of readability, you should always use curly braces even when not mandated by PHP syntax rules as #AlexHowansky mentions.
Most of it is in the code style. In terms of rapidity of the results, it doesn't change much. If you are using $varLenght more then once, then you are saving the call to the function to obtain the length. But even that, the time difference is extremely minimal (I would even like to say unnoticable).
But: When developping any applications, you have to keep in mind that you might not be the only one making changes to it down the road, or you might not be as fresh and up to date with the exact program you are writing. Therefore, the cleaner the code, the easier it is in terms of maintenance, and THAT'S where you save a lot of time down the road.
Best Practice dictates that functions be called minimally. In your case the practice doesn't violate the rule, but it is not uncommon to find code like:
if ( strlen($message) > 100 )
echo "Over Ten";
else if ( strlen($message) > 20 )
echo "Over Ten";
else if ( strlen($message) > 10 )
echo "Over Ten";
...
A common prevention is to always assign function results to a variable for consistency.
I wouldn't say there is any benefit apart from the re-use case you've already mentioned. Your latter case is more readable, probably faster, and probably less memory-intensive. I would however strongly recommend always using braces, even when your conditional is only one line:
if (condition) {
statement;
}
I don't know if it's just me or not, but I am allergic to one line ifs in any c like language, I always like to see curly brackets after an if, so instead of
if($a==1)
$b = 2;
or
if($a==1) $b = 2;
I'd like to see
if($a==1){
$b = 2;
}
I guess I can support my preference by arguing that the first one is more prone to errors, and it has less readability.
My problem right now is that I'm working on a code that is packed with these one line ifs, I was wondering if there is some sort of utility that will help me correct these ifs, some sort of php code beautifier that would do this.
I was also thinking of developing some sort of regex that could be used with linux's sed command, to accomplish this, but I'm not sure if that's even possible given that the regex should match one line ifs, and wrap them with curley brackets, so the logic would be to find an if and the conditional statement, and then look for { following the condition, if not found then wrap the next line, or the next set of characters before a line break and then wrap it with { and }
What do you think?
Your best bet is probably to use the built-in PHP tokenizer, and to parse the resulting token stream.
See this answer for more information about the PHP Tokenizer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5642653/1005039
You can also take a look at a script I wrote to parse PHP source files to fix another common problem in legacy code, namely to fix unquoted array indexes:
https://github.com/GustavBertram/php-array-index-fixer/blob/master/aif.php
The script uses a state machine instead of a generalized parser, but in your case it might be good enough.
In this code fragment:
$results = $this->getAdapter()->fetchAll($query);
if(count($results)) {
// …
}
…do you consider the if(count()) part to be be a well understood idiom, or confusing code. i.e. should it be
if(count($results) > 0)
???
Using a boolean expression with 'if' requires less understanding of a language than using implicit conversions, so I would always prefer the second option (adding "> 0") - at least if this code is meant to be read by others, too. You never know who will maintain your code. The keyword is "clarity" here.
But I must admit I have written many times code with if's using an int expression myself, too, because I like its elegance.
They are doing exactly the same job in this context, and are both easily readable.
I'll just add (just in case) that if you're performing this query only to if(count()), then you should be issuing a SELECT COUNT(*) instead!
The count and the extraneous > comparison are pointless. If you receive an actualy array, then the test should just be:
if ($results) {
That's what scripting languages are for. Abstracting low level details away.
You would only need the count if your fetchAll function returns an ArrayObject or similar. Should your function sometimes return a false for example, then your if (count( is going to fail (because count(false)==1 in PHP).
erm...not realy sure what the purpose of this question is - but the semantics should be self-evident to anyone whom understands PHP
My opinion is that the > 0 check is redundant and unnecessary.
I know other developers who insist that it should be there for clarity, but frankly I can't why -- anyone who can read PHP should be able to discern that they are identical.