Coding style

Coding style

[Mark Kettenis]

Hi folks,

I've been noticing that some folks (most notably Andrew :-) have been
very "economical" in the use of empty lines in function bodies.  I
know that the GNU coding standards say that one should not use too
many of those, but I think there are good reasons to keep with the
tradition of seperating the declaration of local variables from
geneuine code by an empty line, e.g.:

int
max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
{
  struct regcache_descr *descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);

  return descr->max_register_size;
}

instead of:

int
max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
{
  struct regcache_descr *descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);
  return descr->max_register_size;
}

I keep finding the first much more legible.  AFAICT all GNU projects
that take the coding standards serious use that style.  By the way,
using whitespace to logically group lines together within a function
body is generally a good idea too.  Well, IMHO of course...

Anyway, I hope no one will object if add a few extra newlines
here'n'there when I feel it's appropriate?

Mark

Re: Coding style

[Joel Brobecker]

> I know that the GNU coding standards say that one should not use too
> many of those, but I think there are good reasons to keep with the
> tradition of seperating the declaration of local variables from
> geneuine code by an empty line, e.g.:

I agree with Mark.

-- 
Joel

Re: Coding style

[Andrew Cagney]

> (most notably Andrew :-)

It depends on the day of the week.  Sometimes my new code contains lots 
of blank lines, sometimes it doesn't.

Btw, the blank line here:

int
max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
{
   struct regcache_descr *descr;

   descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);
   return descr->max_register_size;
}

makes sense, but when contracted into:

> int
> max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
> {
>   struct regcache_descr *descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);
> 
>   return descr->max_register_size;
> }

or:

> int
> max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
> {
>   struct regcache_descr *descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);
>   return descr->max_register_size;
> }

things get pretty arbitrary.  Is "descr" a declaration or code body?

Anyway, if your new code adds blank lines, I can't remove them without 
rewritting the function - the requirement to keep white space changes 
separate from fixes stops this.

Andrew

PS: This is somewhat ironic, Stan was oft to complain that my code 
contained too many blank lines :-)

Re: Coding style

[Richard Earnshaw]

> makes sense, but when contracted into:
> 
> > int
> > max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
> > {
> >   struct regcache_descr *descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);
> > 
> >   return descr->max_register_size;
> > }
> 
> or:
> 
> > int
> > max_register_size (struct gdbarch *gdbarch)
> > {
> >   struct regcache_descr *descr = regcache_descr (gdbarch);
> >   return descr->max_register_size;
> > }
> 
> things get pretty arbitrary.  Is "descr" a declaration or code body?

I find the break helpful to delimit the extent of the declarations.  I'm 
not too bothered if there is code in the declarations, provided it's 
straight-forward initializations, not complex conditional operations and 
the like.

R.