Re: gtk2-perl: moving on by standardizing our code

[Guillaume Cottenceau <gc mandrakesoft com>]

muppet <scott asofyet org> writes:

> On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 17:24, Christian Borup wrote:
> > On ons, 2003-03-12 at 20:40, Guillaume Cottenceau wrote:
> > >        C code
> > > 1: opening curly of a function after a newline
> >
> > This seems inconsistent to me and less readable. I prefer { on the same
> > line. I see no difference from control structures.
>
> C functions cannot nest, whereas C control structures can.  the
> difference in brace style is therefore not so inconsistent.  java and
> perl can nest functions, so open { of a function on the same line makes
> sense for those languages.

I'd add to the rationale that in C, compared to Perl or other
languages, the function name and prototype doesn't provide any
keyword (whereas we have "sub" in Perl, etc), so putting a line
after it with a single { is helpful to better differentiate the
function name/prototype with the function contents.

> c.f. linux kernel coding style, <kernelsrc>/Documentation/CodingStyle:
> "Heretic people all over the world have claimed that this inconsistency
> is ...  well ...  inconsistent, but all right-thinking people know that
> (a) K&R are _right_ and (b) K&R are right.  Besides, functions are
> special anyway (you can't nest them in C)."

I like those explanations :).


> i think the important this is for us to write *maintainable* perl, which
> is very different from "highly creative and ingenious" perl.  the latter
> sometimes saves space and processing, but more often creates headaches
> for maintainers of the resulting line noise; even the author can have a
> hard time figuring it out after a month or two.

Agreed. Even if, for example, I'd use "and" instead of the infix
"if" in my personal code projects, I'm totally ready to still use
"if" in gtk2-perl so that we have a more maintainable project. I
agree we should restrict the use of too creative/ingenious perl
(without going back to C-like perl style of course).


-- 
Guillaume Cottenceau - http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~gc/