coding style for who.c

Devin Bayer devin at freeshell.org
Sat Mar 11 21:33:45 UTC 2006


On Mar 11, 2006, at 12:48, Glenn L. McGrath wrote:

> Reducing the line count doesn't make the code more readable.

I think this is the main place most style guides go wrong; they focus  
on understanding of the little picture instead of the big picture.   
Line count it very important. That's why we don't quote entire emails  
when responding. If you can't see the start and end of a function all  
at once then you have to remember what isn't on the screen.

For your example:

> a = strchr(str,'-');
> if (a) {
> }

I think it totally depends on the usage.  If a is used later in the  
function, do it this way.  But if it's only used in the if'ed block,  
it's visual scope is wrong.  Looking at this function as a whole  
doesn't clearly show the point of a when it's assigned before the if- 
block.

int function(char *str)
{
	int somevar, more;
	char *a;
	type_t more;

	// do something
	for(somevar = 9; somevar % 8; ++somevar) {
		printf("%c", str[somevar]);
	}

	if(a = strchr(str, '-')) {
		puts(a);
		return 0;
	}

	a = strchr(str, '-');
	if(a) {
		puts(a);
		return 0;
	}

	// do something else
	for(more = 4; more * 15 % 8; ++more) {
		printf("%c", str[more]);
	}

	return 1;
}



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