I'm probably the last person in the world to prefer:
while ((len = getline(line, MAXLINE)) > 0)
if (len > max)
{
max = len;
copy(longest, line);
}
if (max > 0) /* there was a line */
printf("%s", longest);
I fear this may be literally true: this brace style is called Whitesmith's, and I was reporting bugs to the cc-mode indenter for emacs a while ago. BSD/Allman and K&R styles never made sense to me.
Add a new statement to the while-loop. Now you've figured out why that style isn't so hot. You now have to remember to go add the new braces, and typically people are mentally putting them in so they forget. Same with the last if-statement. You'll go, add the new line, indent and go "cool done". Then scratch your head for hours wondering why it's not working.
Oh, well there are two issues here: whether to always include braces, and what brace style to use. Whitesmiths is a brace style, that's what I was pointing out. The decision to include braces or not is a different thing. I tend to omit braces in obvious situations, but am not beholden to it.
Exactly. Fully bracketed syntax prevents this kind of maintenance breakage.
Weird contrast: Perl, for all its klugy syntax, requires fully bracketed syntax on the statement bodies of "if", "while" & the like, so this never happens. Of course, you get other readability issues there...
Of course, he presents most of the major styles, pretending to be "fair and balanced", but if you read between the lines of the "abstract block" argument, it's clear that the other styles which align keywords or grouping symbols at a different level other than the compound statements they delimit are brain damaged, or at least visually misleading.
I'm currently experimenting with a hybrid of this and K&R style, that would look like this:
while ((len = getline(line, MAXLINE)) > 0)
if (len > max) {
max = len;
copy(longest, line);
}
if (max > 0) /* there was a line */
printf("%s", longest);
So far I'm finding that it gives good readability, doesn't waste too many lines on braces, and doesn't run into many issues of accidentally leaving braces out.
I started it after having started writing lisp and python, and I'm getting used to just ignoring the braces and going by indentation, which this style emphasises.
