Best Practice on IF/ELSE Statement Order

Question

Which is a better practice? (I\'m coding in .Net if that makes a difference)

IF condition = true THEN
   ...true action--even if rare...
ELSE
   ...action
E         


        

Answer 1

You have received some pretty good answers already. I'm going to approach the question from a different angle.

First, as far as performance goes it may not matter as much as you think in modern CPUs. That's because they use a feature called branch prediction in which the CPU attempts to predict the most likely direction the code will take. Of course, I still agree that you should place the most likely branch at the top if performance is your main concern.

Second, I prefer readability over trivial performance enhancements. In most cases the benefit of readability outweigh those of performance.

Third, use guard clauses when possible. It makes the code more readable.