Flipping the order of the conditional expression branches usually increases the clarity of such statements.
Use the Ignore '!= null' comparisons and Ignore '!= 0' comparisons options to ignore comparisons of the form
obj != null
or num != 0
.
Since obj != null
effectively means "obj exists",
the meaning of the whole expression does not involve any negation
and is therefore easy to understand.
The same reasoning applies to num != 0
expressions, especially when using bit masks.
These forms have the added benefit of mentioning the interesting case first.
In most cases, the value for the == null
branch is null
itself,
like in the following examples:
static String getName(Person p) {
return p != null ? p.getName() : null;
}
static String getExecutableString(int fileMode) {
return (fileMode & 0b001001001) != 0 ? "executable" : "non-executable";
}