Always Use Curly Braces

✅ One-liner Summary

Always use curly braces, even for one-liners — clarity beats cleverness.

💡 Short Explanation

Leaving out curly braces in control statements like if, for, or while can make your code shorter but also more error-prone.
It’s easy to introduce bugs when new lines are added without realizing they’re outside the intended scope. Curly braces make the control flow crystal clear.

🚫 Bad Example

This code might look fine — until someone adds a logging line thinking it’s part of the if block:

if (user.IsActive)
    SendWelcomeEmail(user);
    Log.Info("Welcome email sent."); // ⚠️

Only the first line runs conditionally. The log always runs — even if the user isn’t active.

✅ Good Example

With braces, it’s obvious what belongs in the if block — and mistakes like the one above are avoided.

if (user.IsActive)
{
    SendWelcomeEmail(user);
    Log.Info("Welcome email sent.");
}

💬 Real-World Insight

Apple’s infamous goto fail bug in 2014 happened because of a missing brace. It compromised SSL verification in macOS and iOS — all from a subtle indentation mistake.
Braces could have prevented it.

🧠 Key Takeaways

• Always use braces to clearly define scope.
• Prevents accidental logic errors when modifying code.
• Safer and more readable — especially in team environments.

🛠️ Implementation Guide

To enforce this rule in your project, add the following to your .editorconfig file:

csharp_prefer_braces = true
dotnet_diagnostic.IDE0011.severity = warning

This will make the compiler treat missing braces as a warning, ensuring consistent code style across your team.