"White space"

[Lord_Jeremy]

I love white space. I do stuff like this:

function(
        int     parameter 1 , //comment
        int     parameter 2 , //comment
...
        word    parameter20 ) //more comment

Unfortunately the other programmers would do stuff like:

function(int parameter1,int parameter2, ... word parameter20)

All on one line. And when I space it out they complain! It's horrible!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Lord_Jeremy

I love white space. I do stuff like this:

function(
        int     parameter 1 , //comment
        int     parameter 2 , //comment
...
        word    parameter20 ) //more comment

Unfortunately the other programmers would do stuff like:

function(int parameter1,int parameter2, ... word parameter20)

All on one line. And when I space it out they complain! It's horrible!

It actually makes more sense (to me) to have it on one line with a few spaces in between. Ideally, you've chosen descriptive variable names, so comments are not totally necessary.

Now, if a line is getting too long, I will break it between parameters to for readability.

And no, I haven't had anyone complain about not enough whitespace yet. The parameters for my C++ class last semester were something like 1 extra line between groups of lines (say, between 2 for loops) and 3 lines between functions, plus the comment lines. I think I had about 650+ lines for a "voting machine" program, including whitespace and comment after comment after comment--and throw in some code for good measure.

Actually, one quote I've seen on here in the spotlights is: "A programmer's job is to write documentation that just happens to compile.", or something like that. Because it's documentation, it needs to be readable. I'd have a hard time reading the code above, due to the fact that having all the parameters separate from the header makes them look like variable declarations within the function. That's probably why they're complaining--they can't tell whether or not you're declaring variables or parameters. If you do do it this way, you might want to indicate in the comment that it's a parameter before anything else.

[Lord_Jeremy]

Originally Posted by EricH

It actually makes more sense (to me) to have it on one line with a few spaces in between. Ideally, you've chosen descriptive variable names, so comments are not totally necessary.

Now, if a line is getting too long, I will break it between parameters to for readability.

I usually only space out the parameter list when there's a large number of parameters. In the example I tried to show that there were 20 parameters

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Lord_Jeremy

I usually only space out the parameter list when there's a large number of parameters. In the example I tried to show that there were 20 parameters

What I prefer to do is to put a parameter list in the header comment. No extra comments... and the list is right behind it.

Then again, you should see some of my if statements and the conditions in them...

[Andrew Schreiber]

I would like to bring up the topic of the ternary operator. For those of you who do not know, in C you can use a?b:c; and have it as a completely valid statement so for example:

int foo(int bar)
{
  return bar>0?1:-1;
}

The above is valid code and will return -1 if bar is negative and 1 otherwise. This is pretty clean code and, assuming you know the operator, is easy to read. Just curious what people think about it since we are talking about making code easier. I know that most of my college professors, though knowing the operator, do not like me using it.

[nathanww]

ternary operator=blech. The problem with it is even if you know what it does(which not everyone does), I prefer syntax that actually reflects the logic of the process(like a standard if/else)

As for whitespace--I am known among some people for writing "MLA code"--basically, I code the same way that I would right an essay, with indents, paragraphs, etc.