Boolean checking in the if condition

Question

Which one is better Java coding style   boolean status   true  if   status          do sth   else         do sth     or   if  status    false          do sth   else         do sth

User · Answer

This is more readable and good practice too   if  status     do sth  else    do sth

User · Answer

The first one  But just another point  the following would also make your code more readable   if   status           do false logic   else          do true logic     Note that there are extra spaces between if and the    and also before the else statement   EDIT  As noted by  Mudassir  if there is NO other shared code in the method using the logic  then the better style would be   if   status           do false logic       do true logic

User · Answer

I would suggest that you do   if  status          positive work   else          negative work     The    tests  while obviously redundant   also run the risk of a single   typo which would result in an assignment

User · Answer

My personal feeling when it comes to reading  if  status    if not status  if status    false    if status is false   if you are not used to  status reading  I see no harm doing as the second way   if you use  active  instead of status I thing if  active  is more readable

User · Answer

The former  The latter merely adds verbosity

User · Answer

First style is better  Though you should use better variable name

User · Answer

If you look at the alternatives on this page  of course the first option looks better and the second one is just more verbose   But if you are looking through a large class that someone else wrote  that verbosity can make the difference between realizing right away what the conditional is testing or not   One of the reasons I moved away from Perl is because it relies so heavily on punctuation  which is much slower to interpret while reading   I know I m outvoted here  but I will almost always side with more explicit code so others can read it more accurately   Then again  I would never use a boolean variable called  status  either   Maybe isSuccess or just success  but  status  being true or false does not mean anything to the casual reader intuitively   As you can tell  I m very into code readability because I read so much code others have written

User · Answer

It really also depends on how you name your variable   When people are asking  which is better practice  - this implicitly implies that both are correct  so it s just a matter of which is easier to read and maintain   If you name your variable  status   which is the case in your example code   I would much prefer to see  if status    false      if status is false  On the other hand  if you had named your variable isXXX  e g  isReadableCode   then the former is more readable  consider   if  isReadable       if not readable   System out println  I m having a headache reading your code

User · Answer

Former  of course  Latter is redundant  and only goes to show that you haven t understood the concept of booleans very well   One more suggestion  Choose a different name for your boolean variable  As per this Java style guide      is prefix should be used for boolean variables and methods       isSet  isVisible  isFinished    isFound  isOpen      This is the naming convention for   boolean methods and variables used   by Sun for the Java core packages       Using the is prefix solves a common   problem of choosing bad boolean names   like status or flag  isStatus or   isFlag simply doesn t fit  and the   programmer is forced to chose more   meaningful names       Setter methods for boolean variables   must have set prefix as in       void setFound boolean isFound        There are a few alternatives to the   is prefix that fits better in some   situations  These are has  can and   should prefixes   boolean hasLicense    boolean canEvaluate    boolean shouldAbort   false

User · Answer

The first one  or if  status      second clause     else      first clause       EDIT  If the second form is really desired  then if  false    status   lt etc gt   while uglier  is probably safer  wrt typos

[java] Boolean checking in the 'if' condition

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