Different ways of writing the "if" statement [closed]

Question

For cases like this, there's also the conditional operator:

output = (val % 2 == 1) ? "Number is odd" : "Number is even";

If you're definitely going to use an "if" I'd use version 2 or version 4, depending on the rest of your bracing style. (At work I use 4; for personal projects I use 2.) The main thing is that there are braces even around single statements.

BTW, for testing parity it's slightly quicker to use:

if ((val & 1) == 1)

Version 2. I always include the brackets because if you ever need to put more than one line under the conditional you won't have to worry about putting the brackets in at a later date. That, and it makes sure that ALL of your if statements have the same structure which helps when you're scanning code for a certain if statement.

I use version 2.

One reason to use curly braces becomes more clear if you don't have an else.

if(SomeCondition)
{
  DoSomething();
}

If you then need to add another line of code, you are less likely to have an issue:

if(SomeCondition)
{ 
  DoSomething();
  DoSomethingElse();
}

Without the braces you might have done this:

if(SomeCondition)
   DoSomething();
   DoSomethingElse();

I personally prefer 3. The extra curly braces just add too much unnecessary visual noise and whitespace.

I can somewhat see the reasoning for 2/4 to reduce bugs, but I have personally never had a bug because thinking extra lines were inside an if statement. I do use C# and visual studio so my code always stays pretty well formatted. This could however be a problem if I was a more notepad style programmer.

I prefer #2. Easy readability.