Question

Why is it bad practice to declare variables on one line?

e.g.

private String var1, var2, var3 

instead of:

private String var1; private String var2; private String var3; 

Answer 1

I think that there are various reasons, but they all boil down to that the first is just less readable and more prone to failure because a single line is doing more than one thing.

And all that for no real gain, and don’t you tell me you find two lines of saved space is a real gain.

It’s a similar thing to what happens when you have

if ((foo = some_function()) == 0) {     //do something } 

Of course this example is much worse than yours.