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Comment by eru

3 years ago

Well, in C the visual indentation and the meaning of the code (given by {}) can diverge. That's even worse, and happens in practice. Many style guidelines for C have evolved specifically to address that problem with 'the language itself'.

> Well, in C the visual indentation and the meaning of the code (given by {}) can diverge.

How?

  • The compiler doesn't check your indentation at all. (OK, not true, these days you get warnings for misleading indentation.) But here's an example of misleading indentation in C:

        if(some condition)
            do something; {
            do something else;
        }
        do another thing;
    

    You can stretch 'some condition' out over multiple lines and have some more parents inside of it, to make it more confusing.

    See also https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/16530