Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 16:26:05 +0200 From: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org>, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: code density vs readability Message-ID: <p05100334b7d8e6544d17@[194.78.144.27]> In-Reply-To: <20010927141333.A44288@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> References: <20010927141333.A44288@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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At 2:13 PM +0100 9/27/01, j mckitrick wrote: > what guidelines do you personally follow to balance readability vs > efficiency of source code? Whatever feels right. ;-) > Can lack of blank lines and other whitespace easily become an impediment to > readability? When (IYO) is there TOO much? Yup, this can be a problem. Myself, I see it like writing prose. I don't put a blank line between every sentence, only between paragraphs. However, as verbose as I am, sometimes even just a single sentence is several lines long, and becomes a paragraph in and of itself. In C, I also like to put opening and closing braces on a line by themselves, in a more Pascal-like style as opposed to classic K&R style. > One of the software engineers I work with (from mainframe/DOS days) has his > code spread out so thin, you can page down 3 or 4 pages before you start to > see meaningful code, and he seems to skip a line after almost every line of > code. Not to mention spaces before and after every parenthesis, brace, or > bracket. It seems this would make it easy to read the first time, but a > nuisance after that. If it's so bad, you can always run it through a program to reformat it afterwards. Indeed, I believe that the judicious use of formatting programs can help set a common project-wide "style" to which all code will comply, because all code gets fed through the formatter before being submitted. -- Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be> H4sICIFgXzsCA2RtYS1zaWcAPVHLbsMwDDvXX0H0kkvbfxiwVw8FCmzAzqqj1F4dy7CdBfn7 Kc6wmyGRFEnvvxiWQoCvqI7RSWTcfGXQNqCUAnfIU+AT8OZ/GCNjRVlH0bKpguJkxiITZqes MxwpSucyDJzXxQEUe/ihgXqJXUXwD9ajB6NHonLmNrUSK9nacHQnH097szO74xFXqtlbT3il wMsBz5cnfCR5cEmci0Rj9u/jqBbPeES1I4PeFBXPUIT1XDSOuutFXylzrQvGyboWstCoQZyP dxX4dLx0eauFe1x9puhoi0Ao1omEJo+BZ6XLVNaVpWiKekxN0VK2VMpmAy+Bk7ZV4SO+p1L/ uErNRS/qH2iFU+iNOtbcmVt9N16lfF7tLv9FXNj8AiyNcOi1AQAA To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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