I cannot understand this programming style

Question

Can someone explain to me what this line of code means and whether it is good practice?

It seems to me that it is trying to assign one or another value to a boolean, but it is not clear.

   myBoolVar = isC || isP || isX;

Answer 1

The || operator represents a conditional OR.

myBoolVar will be true if any of isC, isP, or isX is true.

It is similar to the | operator between boolean operands except that if the left-hand-side evaluates to true, the right-hand-side will not be evaluated.

As to whether it's good practise, consider a more verbose semantic equivalent:-

bool myBoolVar;

if (isC)
{
  myBoolVar = true;
}
else if (isP)
{
  myBoolVar = true;
}
else if (isX)
{
  myBoolVar = true;
}

In particular, consider which one you would prefer to maintain. For the most part, I would expect that folks consider the terser myBoolVar = isC || isP || isX; to be more readable.

I see from the comments below that you make an argument about programming being about simplicity and not about "showing off". I agree that programmers often try to compact or deliberately obfuscate code for their own satisfaction - often to the detriment of the project. This is probably not one of those cases. I might name the variables more clearly and I might encapsulate it behind an appropriately-named property, but I'd definitely use the a || b || c construction over something more verbose.

If you feel you have a clearer way to express it, share it with us and we can discuss it.