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From: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
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Subject: Re: Indentation styles
To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 09:28:54 +0200 (MET DST)
Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG (FreeBSD Chat)
In-Reply-To: <199605281801.LAA11424@phaeton.artisoft.com> from "Terry Lambert" at May 28, 96 11:01:22 am
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Terry Lambert writes:
>
>> Automatic beautifiers can only be applied
>> to complete, syntactically correct programs  and  hence
>> are  not available when the need for attention to white
>> space and indentation is greatest.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> This is no longer true because of language sensitive editor technology,
> as in Brief, the UNIX "Brief clone", and the Borland and Microsoft
> offerings.

I'm surprised you omit emacs here.

>> I think Greg's concern in valid, but this is one of Nature's
>> Insoluble Problems.  Let's have some sanity, please!
>
> At one time I suggested running a "beautifier" on code as part of the
> CVS commit process.  I still like the idea.

So do I.  This was basically what I was saying.

> I also like the idea of running a local style template on checkout
> from a CVS tree.  8-).

This makes sense too, as long as it is optional.

> This dodges the "incomplete program" problem, above.

Surely we can assume that anything that has been commited will at
least make superficial syntactical sense?

> Obviously, much of KNF style has evolved from the defaults for the
> vi editor and other tools to allow quick reference of the code (ie:
> "grep \^functionname *.c" to find:
>
> <type declarator>
> functionname( ...
>
> and so on.  As long as these tools are "the approved tools", then
> there needs to be some form of style enforcement to allow them to
> work as expected (my own placement of spacing in parenthesis allows
> editor macros to directly access tags files and man pages.  Obviously,
> it's also a tools-driven decision).

Precisely.

Greg