Are singleline if statements or if statements without braces bad practice?

Question

if (condition) { /* do something */ }
else { /* do something */ }

if (condition)
    /* do something */
else
    /* do something */

I was told tha

Answer 1

This is more coding style than anything else. That said, my personal opinion is that your second example is potentially quite harmful. It's easy enough to accidentally "add a second line to the block" in languages where braces are the only way to create blocks. But in PHP, where an alternate syntax exists, this is even less likely to set off the necessary warning bells:

if ($_GET["asdf"]==1):
    /* do something */
else:
    /* do something */
endif;

Rule of thumb: if you're going to put your "do something" on a separate line, use braces; if you're not going to use braces, put it on the same line!