• no (unregistered)

    i imagine the line immediately before reads: generate a private key

  • (nodebb)

    Ironically if this is C/C++/C# it won't matter because the compiler will optimize it away. Not sure about other languages, a lot of them have way less optimization going on that a lot people give them credit for...

    But yeah, constructs like that are weird and I found them mostly in code with languages that enforce definition at declaration like Java.

  • (nodebb)

    You could argue that this is more of a WTF than a lot of the other code we get here. A 100-line mess could be the result of one developer that just can't keep in their head everything that's happening, or it could be the result of 10 different developers adding stuff over time and never really understanding what the code is doing.

    But something like this should only take two seconds to see the stupidity.

  • (nodebb) in reply to MaxiTB

    Ironically if this is C/C++/C# it won't matter because the compiler will optimize it away.

    Ummm... the thing that mattered in the first place wasn't the extra instructions that would be executed. A coding pattern that doesn't hurt performance but makes it difficult to understand what the code is doing is a very bad thing - even it it doesn't have any negative performance attributes.

  • fanguad (unregistered) in reply to MaxiTB
    Comment held for moderation.
  • Darren (unregistered)

    At least y and z per guaranteed to be random...

  • OldCoder (unregistered)
    Comment held for moderation.
  • Randal L. Schwartz (github)

    As we've often said, there are TWO important audiences for the source code... the compiler, and the person having to maintain it!

  • (nodebb)

    I suspect the original version didn't have the x = y = z line, but someone wanted them set equal and some PHB disallowed removing lines or versioning code.

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