What is a good way to comment if-else-clauses?
- by acme
Whenever I'm writing a typical if-else-construct in any language I wonder what would be the best way (in terms of readability and overview) to add comments to it. Especially when commenting the else clause the comments always feel out-of-place for me. Say we have a construct like this (examples are written down in PHP):
if ($big == true) {
bigMagic();
} else {
smallMagic()
}
I could comment it like this:
// check, what kind of magic should happen
if ($big == true) {
// do some big magic stuff
bigMagic();
} else {
// small magic is enough
smallMagic()
}
or
// check, what kind of magic should happen
// do some big magic stuff
if ($big == true) {
bigMagic();
}
// small magic is enough
else {
smallMagic()
}
or
// check, what kind of magic should happen
// if: do some big magic stuff
// else: small magic is enough
if ($big == true) {
bigMagic();
} else {
smallMagic()
}
What are your best-practice examples for commenting this?
