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Re^3: if variants

by DrHyde (Prior)
on Oct 21, 2004 at 08:40 UTC ( [id://401086]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^2: if variants
in thread if variants

Noooooo! != is fine. It's unless ... else that is hideously broken!

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Re^4: if variants
by apotheon (Deacon) on Oct 21, 2004 at 08:46 UTC
    I can understand avoiding the != in an if statement, since using unless covers that functionality. I don't know why unless . . . else would be "bad", however. Explain?

    - apotheon
    CopyWrite Chad Perrin
      In English, saying "if this, do that, else do the other" makes sense and is easy for a person to parse. However "unless this, do that, else do the other" is much harder to parse because the "else" clause is a double negative (or even a triple negative if you have "unless not this"). Same applies to perl.

      While you could, perhaps, argue that "if not this, do that, else do the other" is also a double negative, it's still easy to parse because it's familiar. We see it in every programming language ever.

        In short, then, it's a readability issue. Got it. Thanks.

        I think my facility for formal and symbolic logic systems probably makes it more difficult for me than for most people to recognize when some complex representation of a logical expression is difficult to parse by eye.

        - apotheon
        CopyWrite Chad Perrin

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