Chapter 8General Programming

THIS chapter is largely devoted to the nuts and bolts of the language. It discusses the treatment of local variables, control structures, the use of libraries, the use of various data types, and the use of two extralinguistic facilities: reflection and native methods. Finally, it discusses optimization and naming conventions.

Item 45: Minimize the scope of local variables

This item is similar in nature to Item 13, "Minimize the accessibility of classes and members." By minimizing the scope of local variables, you increase the readability and maintainability of your code and reduce the likelihood of error.

Older programming languages, such as C, mandated that local variables must be declared at the head of a block, ...

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