Question

I was wondering, do too many IF statements bloat coding and when is it okay not to use them?

These two examples both work the same and I’m the only one editing / using the script. Am I teaching myself bad habits by not adding the IF statement?

if ($en['mm_place']) {
    $tmp = explode(",", $en['mm_place']);
    $en['mm_place'] = $tmp[0].", ".$tmp[1]." ".$tmp[2];
}

is the same as…

$tmp = explode(",", $en['mm_place']);
$en['mm_place'] = $tmp[0].", ".$tmp[1]." ".$tmp[2];

EDIT: using @Francis Avila example I came up with this…

if ($en['mm_wmeet']) {
    $tmp = explode(",", $en['mm_wmeet']);
    for ($i = 0; $i < count($tmp); $i++) {
        $en['mm_wmeet'] = $tmp[$i];
    }
}

Answer 1

In this particular example, they are not the same.

If $en['mm_place'] is empty, then $tmp will not have three elements, so your string construction will be bogus.

Actually what you need is probably this:

if (!empty($en['mm_place'])) { // depending on whether you know if this is set and must be a string.
    $tmp = explode(',', $en['mm_place'], 3);
    if (count($tmp)===3) {
        $en['mm_place'] = "{$tmp[0]}, {$tmp[1]} {$tmp[2]}";
    }
}

Run PHP with E_NOTICE set, and code in such a way that you don’t get any notices. PHP requires an extraordinary amount of discipline to use safely and properly because it has so many sloppy misfeatures. Notices will inform you of most bad practices. You will probably end up using lots of if statements.