Question

Throughout my (short) career so far in programming (merely a student working on internship) I have noticed that when it comes to IF statements, there is two different ways of doing it.

If we take foo as a boolean value:

if(foo)
{
    //do stuff
}

This is my preferred way of doing things when dealing with IF statements, if I’m looking for false I use:

if(!foo)
{
    //do more stuff
}

However, when some people see this they raise an eyebrow, suggesting that I may be stuck in a bad habit. But I wanted to know, is there any difference between this way or the “typical” way?

if(foo == true)
{
    //do a bit more stuff
}

Am I falling into a common trap for new programmers? Or is there no difference (at least a noticeable one)

Answer 1

I never write == true or == false. It goes against the point of an if-sentence, in my opinion.

an if is basicly: If a Boolean expression is true, do something. a Boolean is a boolean expression in and of itself, so why wrap it?

So in my opinion, the ones using == true are the ones with a bad habit. Becuase they display ignorance of how the language works.

think of these “allowed” ways to write if (Foo) and if (!Foo):

if (Foo == true) //If Foo is the same as true
if (Foo != true //If Foo is not the same as true
if (Foo != false) //if Foo is not the same as false
if (Foo == false) //If Foo is the same as false
if (Foo) //If Foo
if (!Foo) //If not Foo

using == and != with booleans actually introduce new ways to make mistakes both when programming and reading code.

Boolean and !Boolean is hard to misread.