Page 88 - C-Language

Some programmers use the strategy of putting the constant to the left of the operator (commonly
called Yoda conditions). Because constants are rvalues, this style of condition will cause the
compiler to throw an error if the wrong operator was used.

if (5 = y) /* Error */

if (5 == y) /* No error */

However, this severely reduces the readability of the code and is not considered necessary if the
programmer follows good C coding practices, and doesn't help when comparing two variables so it
isn't a universal solution. Furthermore, many modern compilers may give warnings when code is
written with Yoda conditions.

Incautious use of semicolons

Be careful with semicolons. Following example

if (x > a);
a = x;

actually means:

if (x > a) {}
a = x;

which means x will be assigned to a in any case, which might not be what you wanted originally.

Sometimes, missing a semicolon will also cause an unnoticeable problem:

if (i < 0)
return
day = date[0];
hour = date[1];
minute = date[2];

The semicolon behind return is missed, so day=date[0] will be returned.

One technique to avoid this and similar problems is to always use braces on multi-line conditionals
and loops. For example:

if (x > a) {
a = x;
}

Forgetting to allocate one extra byte for \0

When you are copying a string into a malloced buffer, always remember to add 1 to strlen.

char *dest = malloc(strlen(src)); /* WRONG */

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