Question

Apart from readability, are there any differences in performance or compile-time when a single-line loop / conditional statement is written with and without brakets?

For example, are there any differences between following:

if (a > 10) 
    a = 0;

and

if (a > 10)
{
    a = 0;
}

?

Answer 1

No, there is no difference, the compiler will strip out non-meaningful braces, line-breaks etc.

The compile time will be marginally different, but so marginally that you have already lost far more time reading this answer than you will get back in compile speed. As compute power increases, this cost goes down yet further, but the cost of reducing readability does not.

In short, do what is readable, it makes no useful difference in any other sense.