C style peeve

[Joe Keane]

Here's my biggest C style peeve.  For some reason, many C programmers insist
on always putting parentheses around return values, even when they're not
necessary, which happens to be always.  God knows why, but they write
`return(2+2);' instead of the obvious and K&R-approved style `return 2+2;'.

It's a shame the compiler lets them get away with it, and i think the extra
parentheses should be strictly illegal.  Unfortunately, for some reason the
ANSI committee didn't like this suggestion.  Apparently it would break
existing code, you know the same code that assumes you can determine whether
your program is demand-pages by examining the contents of word 0.

So why do people do this?  I guess they think return is a function, although
you never know what's inside some people's heads.  I think they don't
understand what a control structure is, and what the parentheses in if, while,
and switch statements are for.  I wonder how many times they write `break();'
or `goto(label);' and scratch their heads trying to figure out what's wrong
with the compiler.

I know there are a lot of people that do this, so i'm probably putting my life
in jeopardy by making this post.  I'm sure some of you will be insulted by my
criticism of your coding style, and will get all defensive.  I've heard all
the defenses, like ``it makes it clearer'' (yeah right!), so don't bother
posting yours.  Just think about it.  Thanks.  Oh yeah, the second paragraph
is completely false.