Re: Coding standards

[Gabriel Dos Reis <dosreis at cmla dot ens-cachan dot fr>]

Benjamin Kosnik <bkoz@cygnus.com> writes:

| Since I didn't make these standards up, and since I don't especially
| like some of them myself, perhaps this issue should really be
| addressed. It is my strong preference not to get into a coding
| standards/formatting holy war at this time, but would rather wait till
| after the next snapshot, at the very least. 

Seconded.

[...]

| 	9) I disagree strongly.  Declarations are all in one line in
|         C, and member function declarations should work the same way.  I
|         see that people have been ignoring this rule anyway.
| 
| I respectfully disagree with you, out of a frustration trying to get
| stuff like this on one line:
| 
|   template<class _Traits>
|     basic_istream<char,_Traits>&
|     operator>>(basic_istream<char,_Traits>& __in, unsigned char* __s)
|     { return (__in >> reinterpret_cast<char*>(__s)); }
| 
| Believe me, these member function names are HUGE, the argument lists
| are long, the return values and types are unwieldy, the inclusion of
| templates and having to provide a class-qualified name all end up
| requiring some kind of typographical convention beyond what is
| established practice in C. I've tried it both ways, and have grown to
| prefer the style as outlined in C++STYLE item 9.

The fact that people insists on applying GNU C Standard rules to C++
programs, where obviously they can't apply as they are always puzzles
me. I'm not saying we should throw away C rules altogether; we should
recognize that there are cases in C++ where they are simply ridiculuous. 
The case above is one of them.

-- Gaby
PS: I'm sorry if this reply is somewhat late but we're having serious
connection problems in Cachan.