Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 20:35:53 +1000 From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: grog@lemis.de, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Indentation styles Message-ID: <199605281035.UAA13366@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>First, a question: is there a recommended FreeBSD indentation style?
Yes. See style.9 in -current or /usr/src/admin/style/style in 4.4BSD.
>Now, my problem: I frequently modify other people's code, which
>sometimes causes me problems in reading, simply because the
>indentation varies so much from the indentation that my tools and I
>use. Frequently, I just give up and run the whole source through
>indent(1). The resulting modifications work (usually), but it's
>difficult to pass them back to the original author as diffs.
Don't use indent on other peoples code.
>Therefore, my suggestion: if FreeBSD doesn't have a canonical
>indentation style, it should get one. The style should be
>reproducible with indent(1). (For those of you who don't know,
BSD indent is too broken to produce BSD style :-(. It can only
produce an approximation that looks OK but has too many differences
for automatic use.
>If there is already a recommended FreeBSD indentation style, can it be
>reliably produced with indent(1)? If not, what do people think about
>modifying it to a (closely similar) form which can be created with
>indent(1)?
indent(1) should be changed, not the style. Otherwise 200MB of current
sources that sort of have the correct style would have the wrong style.
>Finally, a restriction. Indent style can, in some cases, influence
>coding style: for example, if you choose an indent of 8 and indent
>braces 8 characters and the contents of a block another 8 spaces,
>you'll soon run out of margins. Even if you only indent a single 8
>characters, you'll end up writing different code from people running
>smaller indents. Does this matter?
8 is too much but we're stuck with it. There is something to be said
for the discipline required to minimise nesting. Don't right code like
this:
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
/*
* Com-
* men-
* ts
* are
* hard
* to
* fit
* bet-
* wee-
* n
* col-
* umns
* 72
* and
* 80.
*/
{
/*->*/ {
/*->*/ /* Some people's xterms are too wide. */
Bruce
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199605281035.UAA13366>