Re: [RFC PATCH] checkpatch: Make the 80-character limit a --strict check only

[Al Viro <viro@ZenIV.linux.org.uk>]

On Mon, Oct 07, 2013 at 12:34:33PM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:

> I've seen far more examples of the 80-column limit making code less
> readable rather than more.  It's only really helpful when it forces code
> restructuring, *not* when it just forces an arbitrary line break.

So teach that piece of crap to complain about fucked-in-head line breaks like
							ret_val =
							    leaf_shift_left(tb,
									    tb->
									    lnum
									    [0],
									    tb->
									    lbytes
									    -
									    1);
in addition to obscenely long lines (and yes, it is a real-world example).

The one and only point of such tools is to help locating the crappy code.
And that's the only sane criterion for evaluating new "stylistic rules" -
does that particular heuristic catch enough shitty places or not?

_Anything_ can be obfuscated to the point where warnings are not produced
anymore...