Question

I have seen different ways of writing an if statement.

Which one do you prefer and why?

Example 1:

if (val % 2 == 1){output = “Number is odd”;}else{output = “Number is even”;}  

Example 2:

if (val % 2 == 1) {     output = “Number is odd”; } else {    output = “Number is even”; } 

Example 3:

if (val % 2 == 1) output = “Number is odd”; else output = “Number is even”; 

Example 4:

if (val % 2 == 1){ output = “Number is odd”; } else { output = “Number is even”; } 

Similar question:

Why is it considered a bad practice to omit curly braces?

Answer 1

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)