Learning braces

Projects Programming
3

Here is the program Auto Formatted in the IDE and with each { and } on its own line.

Doing this makes it much more obvious whech { belongs with which }

In the IDE, if you click just after a { then the corresponding ? will be indicated

// declarations

// constant variables
const int buttonPin = 2;
const int ledPin = 13;
// variable variables
int buttonCount = 0; // counts the button presses
int buttonState = 0; // current number of button presses
int lastButtonState = 0; //last number of button presses

void setup ()
{
  // code to run once
  pinMode (buttonPin, INPUT);
  pinMode (ledPin, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin (9600);
}

void loop()
{
  // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
  // read the buttonPin
  buttonState = digitalRead (buttonPin);
  // compare buttonState to the lastbuttonState
  if (buttonState != lastButtonState)
  {
    // if the buttonState is high then the button went from Off to On
    if (buttonState == HIGH)
    {
      // then increment the buttonCount
      buttonCount ++;
      // and print to the serial monitor
      Serial.println("On");
      Serial.print("number of button pushes:  ");
      Serial.println(buttonCount);
      // but if it didn't
    }
    else
    {
      // then if the buttonState is low, it went from On to Off
      Serial.println ("Off");
    }
    delay (50);
    lastButtonState = buttonState;
    // turn on the LED every four button pushes by checking the modulo of buttonCount
    if (buttonCount % 4 == 0)
    {
      digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
    }
    else
    {
      digitalWrite (ledPin, LOW);
    }
  }
}

Each {} pair encloses a block of code such as here

    if (buttonState == HIGH)
    {
      // then increment the buttonCount
      buttonCount ++;
      // and print to the serial monitor
      Serial.println("On");
      Serial.print("number of button pushes:  ");
      Serial.println(buttonCount);
      // but if it didn't
    }

If the test at the start returns true then the block of code will be executed.