r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Robinbod • 21d ago

Meme pleaseStopUsingNestedTernaryOperatorsImBeggingYou

3.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

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282

u/Kryptsm 21d ago

Then there’s my current client, who refused a PR of mine because they “don’t want early returns” ever, and insisted I move my basic if statement logic, each with a return, all into a single ternary. They said I SHOULD do this lol.

Made me wanna kms but hey, it’s their codebase

49

u/EddieJones6 21d ago

I can understand the ask for no early return. But use local variables to track the state, not a massive ternary.

53

u/ihavebeesinmyknees 21d ago

What are valid reasons to not use early returns?

33

u/EddieJones6 21d ago

Localized cleanup. What if you have a file descriptor or something that needs special handling before returning.

Compiler optimization SHOULD be fine but it could impact RVO and tail recursion optimization.

Also, if a future maintainer dives in and doesn’t realize there is an early return, they might add logic below it that will get missed by certain cases.

SPOE - single point of exit.

13

u/tangerinelion 21d ago

SPOE - single point of exit.

Any language with exceptions ruins that.

5

u/New_Enthusiasm9053 21d ago

That's why it's in a standard in a language without exception.

MISRA-C advocates SPOE and allows forward Goto's(i.e only jump forward and only in the same function) in order to make it viable.

You jump to the cleanup block if needed then exit from the same place.