also if you can't spot that error, you might not realize a subtle, yet important, detail about that line (if written correctly). contrary to what you might expect, it cannot short-circuit the way || does, leading to possible performance or even correctness issues.
This is very true. I hope that people are not using the short-circuit feature in a way that impacts correctness! I would have an issue with that code for trying to be too clever even if there were no bugs and it worked well.
Performance issues, on the other hand, I can see accidentally arising.
Yes, the "and" pattern is common. I've seen plenty of "ensure this exists before operating on it" chains, where it even goes if ( pointer && pointer->otherPointer && pointer->otherPointer->member == value )
I've never seen someone use an "or" pattern in a non-confusing way.
That is, I've seen "and" patterns that act as a safety/early out. I fail to see the use of an "or" pattern where you want to stop executing if the first value is true (ignoring using nots to invert the logic of an and pattern, and I would criticize that).
