🚀 go-pugleaf

David Thomas Richard Given <dtrg@st-andrews.ac.uk> wrote:
>Definately. I use lots of white space:

<pet peeve>
Defin*i*tely.
</pet peeve>

>void foo(int size)
>{
>	int variable1;
>	char *variable2;
>
>	/* Comment here, usually */
>
>	variable2 = (char *)malloc(size);
>	if (variable2 == NULL)
>		barf();
>
>	/* Comment here, as well */
>
>	do_something_with(variable2);
>
>	/* Free storage (I should have used alloca()) */
>
>	free(variable2);
>}
>
>This could be compressed into:
>
>void foo(int size)
>{
>	int variable1;
>	char *variable2;
>	if (!variable2 = (char *)malloc(size))
>		barf();
>	do_something_with(variable2);
>	free(variable2);
>}
>
>...but is a lot harder to follow. Okay, it's a contrived example, but you 
>get my point.

(Sorry about the excessive quoting.  I think it's necessary in this
case.)

For a contrived example, I find it rather fails to make your point.  I
find the second version of the function far more understandable.  The
code is all visually close together, which helps a lot with larger
sections of code.  Blank lines waste vertical space.  Looking at the
code, it is immediately obvious that it allocates memory, with error
checking, then does_something_with the memory, and then frees the
memory.  Comments and blank lines do not help, and in your first
version of the code distract one's attention from what really matters
-- the code.

BTW, there's a bug in the second version.

	if (!variable2 = (char *)malloc(size))

should be

	if (!(variable2 = (char *)malloc(size)))

I'm not sure whether I would have noticed this error as quickly in the
first version of the code (it isn't there), but I suspect not.

-zefram
-- 
Andrew Main <zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk>