C Language Common pitfalls Incautious use of semicolons
Example
Be careful with semicolons. Following example
if (x > a);
a = x;
actually means:
if (x > a) {}
a = x;
which means x will be assigned to a in any case, which might not be what you wanted originally.
Sometimes, missing a semicolon will also cause an unnoticeable problem:
if (i < 0)
return
day = date[0];
hour = date[1];
minute = date[2];
The semicolon behind return is missed, so day=date[0] will be returned.
One technique to avoid this and similar problems is to always use braces on multi-line conditionals and loops. For example:
if (x > a) {
a = x;
}
