Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Path: utzoo!henry From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) Subject: Re: Standard indentation? Message-ID: <1988Dec8.173158.11839@utzoo.uucp> Organization: U of Toronto Zoology References:<1054@goofy.megatest.UUCP> Date: Thu, 8 Dec 88 17:31:58 GMT In article <1054@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes: >My suggestion is not to worry about it during the design phase. Let >people use the style they are most comfortable with. This ignores two problems: there are objective differences between styles (it is *not* all just religion), and mixing styles is thoroughly bad. At the very least, maintenance of old code should use the same style as the old code, and multi-person projects should use a consistent style throughout. >When it is time to turn a release, run all the sources through a >standard pretty-printer. Not a solution in the real world. Maybe if we had a telepathic pretty- printer, but we don't. The programmer can still do a better job of expressing his intent by doing it himself. Pretty-printers should be used as a desperate last resort to make hideous code readable, not as a routine method of cleaning up after lazy, self-centered programmers. -- SunOSish, adj: requiring | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology 32-bit bug numbers. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu