On Wed, 20 Mar 2019, Will Cosgrove wrote:
Any chance we can extend the line length over 80 characters? Is there a
reason to use this antiquated value?
Some call it antiquated. I call it sensible.
Seriously though, I'm open to discussing the rules as I believe consistency is
more valuable than insisting on an exact style. Code style is a lot about
taste and religion.
So what do you say is a suitable max length?
Let me state why I think code should be within 80 columns:
- To allow many code editor windows next to each other on my screens (I often
have several)
- To fit in a "standard" terminal with when using regular command line tools
- The above include sensible line widths when doing "git blame" and gdb'ing
from command line
- To let diff tools like the github diff viewer to sensibly show before
and after in two columns in a not too crazily wide browser window.
- For the same reason books and newspapers don't do overly wide lines: code
gets less readable when very wide.
It makes using descriptive function & variable names problematic
I actually think it works the other way around. It forces us to stop using
ridiculously long and hard-to-read names and instead encourage us to use
shorter names that are more readable and easier to remember. I do think we
still have far too many very long names in libssh2.
and also forces a lot of wrapping in if statements which makes them harder
to parse.
The easy fix for this is: shorter names, fewer indent levels.
But I'm also used to code like this and I think multi-line statements are
easier to read than very wide statements. Again: preference and taste.
--
/ daniel.haxx.se
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