Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 22:47:39 +0530 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr Cc: "Matthew D. Fuller" <fullermd@futuresouth.com>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Pico, indentation (was: Re: The 3.4-STABLE sources ...) Message-ID: <20000121224739.J918@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <20000121034326.A1638@hades.hell.gr>; from charon@hades.hell.gr on Fri, Jan 21, 2000 at 03:43:26AM %2B0200 References: <200001181134.MAA45912@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de> <kqpuuzy57w.fsf@cip12.melaten.rwth-aachen.de> <20000118112201.A44535@rtfm.net> <20000118122300.A18846@futuresouth.com> <20000119002857.B57016@hades.hell.gr> <20000119001149.A24456@futuresouth.com> <20000120083115.B2879@hades.hell.gr> <20000120174843.A4414@futuresouth.com> <20000121034326.A1638@hades.hell.gr>
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Hmm. Somehow I missed the beginning of this. On Friday, 21 January 2000 at 3:43:26 +0200, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > On Thu, Jan 20, 2000 at 05:48:43PM -0600, Matthew D. Fuller wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 20, 2000 at 08:31:15AM +0200, a little birdie told me >> that Giorgos Keramidas remarked >>> >>> You know what they say. If your indentation level exceeds a well >>> defined limit (the 80 characters of a terminal line being one such, >>> uhm, `well defined limit'), you might have to reconsider your design. >> >> Indeed. But that 'well defined limit' gets reached much faster >> (twice as fast, in fact) with 8-char tabs than 4-char. Too much >> faster. I think both these statements miss the obvious point: clarity of style depends on the medium available. style(9) still uses an IBM 029 card punch with an 8 step tab on the program drum. This makes it difficult to express yourself clearly. >>> Without any intention to offend anyone, I'd suggest your friend starts >>> reading that style(9) manpage. >> >> Hey, *I* wrote a lot of the code! Besides, there's a lot of things >> in style(9) that I don't like, and don't use in my own projects. Hear, hear. I don't fight style(9), because it makes for a uniform style in the project, and that makes it easier for people to find their way around. But I do regret that we're still tied to such tiny views of our code. It's been nearly 20 years since I built myself a terminal (remember them? :-) which displayed 64 lines of 128 characters, so I could overview my assembler code. In C, with indentation, the width is even more important, yet style(9) limits us to an absolute maximum of 9 nesting levels, and effectively bars comments to the right of code. Both of these restrictions appear counterproductive to me. They can result in gratuitous creation of subfunctions called only once in order to satisfy the layout requirements. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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