Code Positivity
Writing SQF code without negation
This page provides some insights into what it means to try and write SQF in a positive way. Meaning: in a way that tries to avoid negation as much as is practical.
What is "negation"?
Negation refers to formulating a sentence in a negative way. Here are some examples:
- "do NOT do that!"
- "do NOT change that thing!"
- "he is NOT happy!"
Simply put: any sentence with the word "NOT" in it is using negation.
Why care about negation?
Research has shown ( look it up if you wish ) that the human brain has more difficulty processing sentences with negation in it. Which could lead to the need for reading a sentence multiple times.
The same goes for code in any language.
exitWith is your friend :)
To show you why, here is an example of how something could be written with negation, followed by code without negation that does exactly the same thing.
In the two examples above, avoiding negation makes the code a lot more simple and avoids many nested checks.
Where avoiding negation becomes...... awkward
When trying to avoid negation in all types of situations, it can get awkward inside of a function that COULD have a parameter that needs to be handled IF it is something other than Null.
As you are probably aware, there is no such thing as a command which checks for the opposite of isNull.
For example, in a function where passing a control is optional:
In the example above, the goal is to just move on if an argument is missing or null. therefore, avoiding negation with exitWith is impossible.
If one were to write that same code without negation, it would become very complicated, harder to read, and SLOWER than simply using NOT.
An example of that can be seen below:
What that does is it wraps the parameter into a string, which for objNull would become "<NULL-object>".
Then, simply look for "NULL" in there, and if find returns -1, it sure is a valid object!
CONCLUSION
Yes, it is possible to avoid negation entirely. However, there is a cost. Depending on the situation, it can lead to a significant increase in code execution time..
Therefore, it would be fair to say that striving to avoid negation can be beneficial to the readability of the code, but it becomes a paradox when avoiding it in any given situation.