On Tue, Apr 11, 2023 at 08:30:19PM +0200, Roland Illig wrote: > > The style guide says: > > When declaring variables in functions declare them sorted by size > > What is the purpose of this rule, and is it still useful? I'd rather see > the variables grouped by topic. If that rule's purpose is to help some > ancient compiler lay out the variables efficiently, I don't see a point > in keeping that rule, as modern compilers are advanced enough. >
To save stack space? If you mix up the sizes of the variables then there would be wasted memory due to alignment constraints for accessing a certain sized variable. Those constraints are processor not compiler artifacts. Unless compilers are smart enough to reorder the variables to pack them efficiently in memory then it is still a good idea to do this > > then in alphabetical order > > Why does it make sense to sort variables in the order 'bottom, left, > right, top' instead of the natural pronunciation order 'top, left, > bottom, right', for example? Or 'height, width, x, y' instead of 'x, y, > width, height'? > More of a readability thing I think - if the variable names are sorted and you are looking for "indicator" then you can stop after "height". You can be confident you have not missed the variable in the noise. -- Brett Lymn -- Sent from my NetBSD device. "We are were wolves", "You mean werewolves?", "No we were wolves, now we are something else entirely", "Oh"
