Question

I might be nitpicking, but is it better to do this:

if ($loggedin) {     // normal process } else {     header('Location: login.php'); } 

Or this:

if (!$loggedin) {     header('Location: login.php');     exit(); } // normal process 

Or does it just not matter?

Answer 1

I prefer the 2nd one because that way ‘normal process’ is not already 1 indentation level deep because of a simple check. I think PHP probably optimizes this away so that performance is irrelevant, so at that point it’s a matter of readability and the 2nd one makes more sense to me (‘Not logged in, redirect, exit’) over wrapping all your logic in one huge IF.