if (1) {
  google_conversion_value = 1;
}

What is the meaning of the above statement? I mean, this looks like it will always execute so why bother with the if statement?

if (1) {
  google_conversion_value = 1;
}

What is the meaning of the above statement? I mean, this looks like it will always execute so why bother with the if statement?

• javascript

8 Answers 8

There are two likely explanations:

1. It's a leftover from debugging.
2. The file containing this code is generated dynamically and the original sourcecode contains something like if(<?php echo $some_stuff_enabled; ?>)

However, in the latter case it would have been cleaner to output that code block only if the condition is met - but maybe it's used in some crappy template engine that just allows replacements but no conditionals...

I've seen this before, and I've always assumed it was a remnant of some old condition that was no longer needed, but never removed. I can't see any actual reason to do something like that otherwise.

Potentially because the person writing the code wanted an easy way to turn it off and on again, this is especially useful if there is a lot of code inside the block (not the case here).

Another possibility is that the original programmer couldn't be bothered writing the logic or, more likely, it hadn't been specified so the "if" was left as a placeholder.

More than likely left in from a debug release or something similar. You're right, it will always execute. It could also have been done like this so that it can be easily enabled / disabled by setting the if to 0. Perhaps the developer intended to use it as a flag somewhere else in the code?

actually, this happens when the "if" condition is driven from server, so instead of doing the right thing and not produce the script when the condition is false, they do something like this:

if (<% if (my_server_condition) then Response.Write("1") else Response.Write("0") %>){
    // code goes here
}

Perhaps the if statement used to check for a legitimate conditional, and then someone replaced it with a truthy value for testing/debugging/etc.

You're right, it will always execute because 1 is truthy. I would go through your source control history and investigate that line to see if it used to contain a real conditional. If the conditional was always 1, then it's likely a debugging statement. Otherwise someone might have meant for it to be a temporary change, and may not have meant to check that in (which could be bad).

I'm not sure where this code is from, but as you indicated it will always execute. As for why you'd do this, there are times where you want to see what the result of branch code would be, without having to setup an environment. In this case you can ment out the actual value and replace it with if(1) instead for testing:

// if( ... some hard to achieve condition )
if (1) {
  // Now you can see what happens if this value is set quickly
  google_conversion_value = 1;
}

Of course the problem with this is that it's sometimes easy to forget to remove the if(1) and unment the proper condition.

This is actually the javascript remended by Google on http://support.google./adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1722054#noments (click on Step 2 for the sample HTML)