Thread: if and else if statements

Hey,

I was just wandering if it is better to handle the else statements for all the if's.

A lot of the times in my code I only use the if (true) do this, but there is no else statement.

Is that inproper? Can it lead to problems, and what kind of problems?

Are you saying that in your code you actually write "if (true)"? Let's see an example of what you mean.

There are no syntax problems with using if..else statements (it would be a really bad language if there were). Saying if(true) is useless, obviously, and an else corresponding to that 'if' would be meaningless.

Try to explain a little better exactly what you're saying.

no, no I don't use if(true). That's useless, unless true is defined as a variable that changes value. Anyway, for example I have this piece of code:

Code:

for (j=0; j< vars.NumScan; j++)
	{
		k=0;

		for( i=0; i< FAD.vectDL.size(); i++)
		{
		
			if ( strncmp(FAD.vectDL[i].Param, "ENDL", 4) != 0 && strncmp(FAD.vectDL[i].Param, "END", 3) != 0)
			{
				if(MakeWord(out, &FAD.vectDL[i],
					mtxVicVals[j][k], TempWord) == 1)
				{
					//fprintf(out, "%08x ", TempWord);
					AWords2d[j].push_back(TempWord);
				}
				k++;
			}
		}
		//fprintf(out, "\n");
	}

I only define what happens if a conditin is true, I don't define what to do if it's not.

I wouldn't say it's a problem that you don't handle the else, unless it could yield undesired results when none of the expressions evaluate to true.

yeah, there's several times when there's nothing to do in an else... an empty else is a valid statement, but I've never used it

Code:

if(something)
{
	doSomething();
}
else {} 	//I've never actually used this, but it's valid

» unless true is defined as a variable that changes value

true is a keyword in most languages - you can't name a variable after a keyword.