RE: condingstyle, was Re: utrace comments

["Stuart MacDonald" <stuartm@connecttech.com>]

From: On Behalf Of Satyam Sharma
> readable and obvious at first glance itself. For example, consider:
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> 	if (veryverylengthycondition1 &&
> 		smallcond2 &&
> 		(conditionnumber3a ||
> 		condition3b)) {
> 		...
> 	}
> 
> versus

Whoops! You've got an unterminated if there, let me fix it up...

> 	if (veryverylengthycondition1) {
> 	    && smallcond2
> 	    && (conditionnumber3a
> 	        || condition3b)) {
> 		...
> 	}> 

From: On Behalf Of Scott Preece
> I still find the leading-operator style much more readable. The most
> important thing in reading a long, complex conditional is
> understanding the structure of the operators, not the operands.

Since there's a mix of pre-, post- and infix, the structure of the
operators _depends on_ the operands.

> However, there's a lot of difference of opinion on this (perhaps
> rooted in differences in cognition and reading behavior). For me it's
> not even close - expressions broken so the operators are at the head
> of the line snap into focus and those with operators at the ends of
> the lines look like undifferentiated goo. Since some of the style

I'm exactly opposite; the "uncorrected" line above is a typo because
there's no continuation item at the end of the line. I don't even see
the following lines because they are, by definition, not part of the
code I'm looking at. Leaving the operators at the end of the line I
easily see that it's a binary operator, and there's no second operand
so the next line must contain it, parse the next line as well.

Hm. I didn't realise this but the unspoken underlying factor for me is
the "one instruction per line" style. If you must break over multiple
lines, there must be a continuation item to indicate that. This is how
I detect missing semicolons.

..Stu