On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Greg Lehey wrote:
> On Friday, 29 January 1999 at 11:02:48 -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
> >> If I were working on this code written by someone else it'd leave my
> >> editor looking like the top example, that's for sure. I think that
> >> "How easy is it to edit a piece of code and still have it do what you
> >> expect" is an important consideration, because people DO edit things.
> >
> > Agreed.
> >
> >>> I do agree that complex things like:
> >>>
> >>> if (a | b & c % d ^ e)
> >>>
> >>> should really have some parents to show what is going on.
> >>
> >> I have NO idea of what that is doing and I have plans of looking it up in
> >> the book to work it out..
> >
> > Yes. I agree with that.
> > if (a | b & c % d ^ e)
> > should have been written as:
> > if (((a | (b & (c % d))) ^ e) != 0)
> > (then again, either way it is ugly code and should have comments).
>
> It's interesting that this whole argument has just addressed the
> syntax, and nobody has given any consideration to the semantics. In
> this example, all variables are a single character. Given the fact
> that this expression is probably indented 16 characters, there's a
> strong incentive to keep the variable names short, even at the expense
> of intelligibility. Consider one possible expansion
>
> if (((allocationfail | (IGNOREFAILUREMASK & (incount %
> BLKSIZE))) ^ failures) != 0)
>
> (yes, this still doesn't make sense, but I can't be bothered to look
> for something more appropriate) This is now 99 characters wide, and
> it's the kind of code which doesn't gain in legibility by being broken
> into multiple lines, especially if the indentation of the follow-on
> lines is independent of the structure of the expression. bde has made
> it clear he considers code more than 80 characters wide to be Evil.
> Question: how many people still limit their editor windows to 80
> characters?
I do; doesn't everyone?
>
> Greg
> --
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