use Perl

• Formatting (Score:2)

  by Ovid (2709) on 2008.01.07 4:10 (#60007) Homepage Journal

  Having this kind of discussion can easily become very unproductive and stupid if you just spew opinions.

  Well, this part of the post I agree with 100% :)

  At work, I've already told jplindstrom and others that I don't care what the source code formatting rules are, so long as they're consistent and automated. There's no way in hell I want to enforce them manually, but even if I don't like them, I'll follow them since most (reasonable) programmers have at least semi-coherent styles and when people start getting petty about it, it grates on my nerves more than two-character versus four-character indent arguments.

  Interestingly, I've proposed the "I'll do any format you want so long as it's automated" at several jobs now. Not once has this ever been implemented.

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:1)

    by Aristotle (5147)

    Heh. I chose mine in part because I can cajole perltidy into spitting it out… alas, not entirely:

    1. I have a rule that a comma-separated list is either all on one line, or it gets bracketed/parenthesised and written one item per line. (Fat commas do not count.) Perltidy does not help with this.

    2. The other problem is not due to perltidy, but because I don’t know how to deal with it: line-wrapping.

       I have never found a satisfactory rule for how to break lines to hard-wrap them at a specific col
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jplindstrom (594)

      Your comma separated list reminded me that I have stuff [perl.org] to make that easier to reformat. Well, I see you use Vim, but maybe someone else will find it useful.
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by jplindstrom (594)

    Yes, agreed. It's all about trade-offs, and when weighing consistency against arbitrary-layout-rule, consistency has a lot going for it.
    
    But sometimes you can get two out of two.