Eric Sunshine <sunshine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> Thanks for commenting. I found the original trickier than it had to be. >> It spreads out the logic in several places and is careful to short-cut >> the loop. My first thought was "why doesn't this just use the standard >> form?". But I'm open to the idea that it might be a fairly personal >> standard form... If there's any risk that someone else comes along and >> simplifies this to use a `nr_found` variable, then maybe file this under >> code churning? > > Maybe. Dunno. Even with the suggested function comment, I still find > that the revised code has a higher cognitive load because the reader > has to remember or figure out mentally what `found` contains by the > `return found;` at the end of the function. Judging from the phrase "standard form", I have a feeling that Martin thinks that the updated code is more intuitive (i.e. "we see another one while keeping the one we already found, so we know there is no unique answer"). I do not claim that would be the standard way and using a counter clamped to 2 is substandard, but I find the code more readable with the patch than the original. Even though it helps somewhat that the counter is named "nr_found" and not "nr_match", I found it a bit awkward that the counter in the original pretends to count all the answers, yet does not really count all of them and stops at 2. I agree with Martin that this would probably be subjective. Thanks.
