Question

Sometimes, when I have a multi-case if, or a very simple for, with only two statements, I will forgo braces, instead using the comma. Is this a bad exploitation of the feature, and is it ugly and bad form? Or is it an acceptable way to save time and space?

For example:

if (something)
    b = y, c = z--;

instead of:

if (something) {
    b = y;
    c = z--;
}

Answer 1

It’s indeed a clever way to use that syntactic feature of most C-like languages.

Personally, I try to stay the least ambiguous as possible when I code, so I always include { and } in all of my if statements. It may save time, but I prefer clarity: it doesn’t speed up or slow down the code execution.