Poll on style issue in comparison

[Alexis Dimitriadis]

This is in response to an article asking about the proposed style of
comparisons where the constant is placed on the left, to eliminate
typos like
	if (x=NULL)
> >1.  Do you use this form of comparison?
> 
> No.
As a matter of fact, I tried.  I was rather intrigued when the subject
came up, so I thought I'd give it a go.  One pleasant side effect is things
like 
	if (NULL == (fp = fopen("foo", "r")))
		scream();
The above looks, to me at least, more readable than the other leading product.
The approach seems to work OK when testing for equality, but I felt that
consistency required that I use it in all tests.  However, to reverse
	if (foo > 0)
I have to write
	if (0 < foo)
which is more than a little twisted.  It may be my conditioning, but I _do_not
immediately perceive the two as equivalent.  I stuck with it, but it 
required extra effort to reverse the operators.  
  Another problem was, not all comparisons involve a hard constant.  
Do we reverse
	if (i == some.external->variable)
to convey the fact that we are testing the value of i?  And so on.
  A few weeks later I had to modify the program, and since I did not at
the time feel like going through the same, I put everything back the way
God meant it to be.  Too bad, but mixing the two styles is a complete
no-no.  If there weren't all that existing code that we all need to look at,
this style might stand a chance.  It may have a chance if used for
equality tests only, but that is not as orthogonal.

I hope someone cared about my experience with this silly, but interesting
style.

-- Alexis Dimitriadis
-- 
_______________________________________________
  As soon as I get a full time job, the opinions expressed above
will attach themselves to my employer, who will never be rid of
them again.
				alexis @ reed
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