Re: Richard Teers Solaris book reviewed on Slashdot.org

From: Richard L. Hamilton (Richard.L.Hamilton_at_mindwarp.smart.net)
Date: 10/16/04 

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:33:49 -0000

In article <Pine.SOL.4.58.0410151755380.5289@zaphod.rite-group.com>,
        Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> writes:
> On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Frank Cusack wrote:
>
>> The big 2 that come to mind (someone seems to have borrowed my copy
>> already (!), otherwise I'd look for more) are:
>>
>> func (...)
>> ^

My hunch is that back when one could not have a space between a
parameterized macro name and its parameter list, some people did that
to distinguish macro calls from function calls. If they aren't too
evil side-effects-wise (no multiple references to the same parameter),
I'd just as soon forget what's a macro and what's a function call if I
safely can, and cpp no longer cares about space there for a macro call,
so I'd just as soon see that space gone, esp. since the parens are required
for a function call even if there's no args, i.e. to my mind, the name
and parens are almost a single syntactic entity.

>> and
>>
>> var [i]
>> ^
>
> I actually agree with the 2nd one, but I was about 80% of the way
> through the book before I decided on that. I didn't go back though
> the code and change it to var[i] because I wanted to ensure consistency
> (there would be a fair chance that I'd miss a few). I've put that
> space in for years, and only recently changed my mind.

Yep, we all tend to change our minds on things after awhile. I used to
prefer

int func()
{
[...]
}

but now favor

int
func()
{
[...]
}

since there's some damn tool (was it ctags?) that only recognizes function
definitions if the function name is at the start of a line like the 2nd
example.

I also used to favor keeping spaces to a minimum, but as my eyes got old
enough that focusing was no longer fun, I didn't mind them quite so much
anymore. But that var [i] example still looks strange to me. 

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