Eschew Case Analysis

It ticks me off when I see code like this:

if (str != NULL && *str != '\0') {
exists = true;
}
else {
exists = false;
}

This is a pretty simplistic example, and most -- not all! -- programmers would get rid of the exists variable and the accompanying code, and replace it all with (str && *str). But it's all too common to find more subtle versions of this same kind of logic bloat. And when it's even more complicated and nested... can you say "cyclomatic complexity"?

This is a special case of what Dijkstra very cogently described as "spurious case analysis". That link is well worth reading, by the way.

Dijkstra was certainly on the science side of the engineering-science frontier. I once heard him say that the world would be a better place if all computer programs had to be chiseled in marble. I don't agree with that, but his commandment to avoid case analysis resonates with good software engineering practice: be concise, self-document, code for testability.

If you can avoid case analysis, do so. Otherwise....

More Tcl Lunacy

Funny how when you start making a list, you might even leave off the thing that inspired you to make the list in the first place. The aggravation that led me to my previous rant didn't even make it into that post. So let's extend the "Tcl is a Toy" list a little:

4. Comments don't always begin with "#". At the beginning of a line, "#" is the comment character. But if you want to put a comment at the end of a line of code, you have to use ";#". I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. So ridiculous that I had to start a blog just to rant about it, but when I went to post to the blog, I got sidetracked by three other ridiculous things.

5. Backslashes don't increase the line-number count. If you have some fancy scripts, or embedded Tcl, where you want to report the line number of certain actions, backslashes throw off the count. Why did you have backslashes in your script to begin with? Because Tcl is a toy language that would do something different if you started a new line there without the backslash. Argggh!

Tcl is a Toy Language

I just took over some Tcl code at work. What a toy language! The following are some things that are completely wrong about Tcl.

1. "else/elseif" has to be to the right of a brace. It's one thing if you like using this style of idiotic formatting for your if-else statements:

  if { $x == 0 } {
    do_zero()
  } else {
    do_non_zero()
  }

which hides the structure by putting the "else" in a different column than the "if". But for the language to require you to do such a stupid thing is, well, stupid. It's also bad that it requires you to cleverly put the open brace of the "if" on the same line. It's what I'd usually do anyway, but bad requirement.

2. $x is assigned to as "x". How insane is that? You have two names for the same thing, and you can silently do the wrong thing if you set $x "abc".

3. Whitespace is significant in multi-dimensional arrays. Excuse me? $matrix(1, 1) (with a space) is different than $matrix(1,1)?

I could go on, but that's enough ranting for today.