Question

Looking to improve my IF statement, and I want to keep my code looking pretty

This is what I am currently doing, is it readable, any room for improvement?

SomeObject o = LoadSomeObject();   if( null == o     ||     null == o.ID || null == o.Title     ||     0 == o.ID.Length || 0 == o.Title.Length  ) 

I don’t have anyone to ask around. That’s why I came here in first place. Please don’t close my question 🙁

Answer 1

Your verbosity is leading to a less readable code, I think the following format is best:

if ( null == o || null == o.ID || null.Title || 0 == o.ID.Length || 0 == o.Title.Length ) {   // do stuff } 

We all have high resolution/widescreen displays for a reason, there’s no reason to lock your code at some horribly short syntax. Also, I would simply create a function named IsIDEmpty so that the code could look like

if ( IsIDEmpty(o) ) {   // do stuff } 

to keep the code simpler & cleaner. The function would perform the actual checks and return a boolean. I’m sure this is something you might have re-use for anyways, plus it serves as a simple way for code to be more self documenting/commenting.