Hi Jens Ivar, Konstantin, et al. While waiting for a batch job to finish, building BRAT, ROOT, etc., I thought I'd drop a penny on this one. On Wed, 7 Feb 2001 21:09:42 +0100 (CET) Jens Ivar Jordre <jens@fi.uib.no> wrote concerning ": Re: Artistic style.": > On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Konstantin Olchanski wrote: > > > On Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 07:41:44PM +0100, Jens Ivar Jordre wrote: > > > > > > I'd just like to point out a useful program for our coding and different > > > conventions. The program is called Artistic Style. It does indention > > > and formatting of raw C, C++ and Java code. > > > > > > These programs are a dime a dozen. Nothing to get excited about. I totally agree. The best "code formatter" is the developers mind and hands. Ofcourse one may use some tools to help one out, but they will never ever replace a sound attitude toward writting readable code. There are a six things that are the developers best friend: 1 A good refernce for the language of choice, on our case that would be Bjarne Stroustrup's book, or the ISO/ANSI C++ Standard. 2 A good reference to the used software libraries, which in our case amounts to http://root.cern.ch/root/html/ClassIndex.html + the User's Guide (now version 0.7 I believe) 3 A good compiler, that is GCC (avalible for _all_ platforms) 4 A good editor, that is Emacs (avalible for _all_ platforms) 5 Code versioning and archiving systems, like CVS. 6 A pen and a piece of paper for writting down flow diagrams, class diagrams, algorithms, ideas, etc. In fact, this is the most important tool of all! Much more so then a computer. Let me comment on point 4 in the context of code formatters and the like: Emacs, as you all probably know, is THE editor, no matter what you do. In fact it is much more then an editor - it's a kitchen sink: you have the foset, the drain, the dishwashing brush, the knife, the food, the paint (not togther I hope), and so on. Hence, it should be of little surprise that Emacs can automatically format you code as you write, almost regardless of what you're writting. Personally, I use Emacs for almost everything, heck sometimes I even execute ROOT from a shell in Emacs. More specifically, I use Emacs for writting code. Now, per default, line-wrapping (also known as auto-fill) and colored fonts (aka font-lock) is not turned on for C/C++ code in Emacs, so what I do, is that I put something like the below in my ~/.emacs (On Windoze I believe it's %HOME%\emacs): ;;; Add colours to all modes. (global-font-lock-mode t) ;;; My hook for C/C++ code (defun my-c-mode-common-hook () "Hook for C/C++ mode" ; (setq c-comment-continuation-stars "*") (c-toggle-auto-hungry-state 1) (if (eq global-font-lock-mode t) (progn (add-to-list 'c++-font-lock-extra-types "\\sw+_t") (add-to-list 'c++-font-lock-extra-types "FILE") ; Below for ROOT (add-to-list 'c++-font-lock-extra-types "T\\sw+") ; Below for BRAT (add-to-list 'c++-font-lock-extra-types "Br\\sw+"))) (if (eq global-font-lock-mode nil) (turn-on-font-lock)) (turn-on-auto-fill) (set-variable 'c-comment-continuation-stars "*") (set-variable 'c-indent-comments-syntactically-p t) (set-variable 'c-cleanup-list '( ; brace-else-brace brace-elseif-brace empty-defun-braces list-close-comma scope-operator)) (set-variable 'c-hanging-semi&comma-criteria '(c-semi&comma-no-newlines-for-oneline-inliners c-semi&comma-no-newlines-before-nonblanks c-semi&comma-inside-parenlist)) (set-variable 'c-hanging-braces-alist '((brace-list-open) (substatement-open after) (block-close . c-snug-do-while) (extern-lang-open after) (inline-open . nil) (inline-close after)))) ;;; Empty hooks for C++ mode (defun my-c++-mode-hook () "Hook for C++ mode" ) ;;; Empty hooks for C mode (defun my-c-mode-hook () "Hook for C mode" ) ;;; Set hooks for C/C++ modes (add-hook 'c-mode-common-hook 'my-c-mode-common-hook) (add-hook 'c++-mode-hook 'my-c++-mode-hook) (add-hook 'c-mode-hook 'my-c-mode-hook) ;;; Decorate almost everything (setq font-lock-maximum-decoration '((c-mode . 3) (c++-mode . 3))) You can refer to my code in BRAT (e.g. BrDb<...>) for examples, for better or for worse - though I believe it's somewhat readable. > At least I agree with the first one. > > > > If used, it will make our code easier to read. > > > > I rather doubt this claim. The best way (the only way) to make code easy > > to read is to *write good code*. Linus Torvalds wrote quite a few > > excellent assays on this. If you care for what Linus has to say (and who doesn't - I mean, even Bill hs to listen when the mad fin speaks), refer to /usr/src/linux/Documentation/CodingStyle on almost any Linux box. > Couldn't agree more regarding the best way. However, it is easier to read > code that has structured indention than complete anarchy. Uh. Don't confuse Anarchy with Chaos. Two very different things. However, there are unfortunually many examples in BRAT of how unreadable and chaotic code can be if not indentet . I guess Jens Ivar suggesting to use something like AStyle reflects the current situation very well. > > > It has some built in styles. Maybe we could settle upon one of these. > > > > > > Coding styles, "spaces per tab", the only right place to put the curly > > braces, underscores versus mixed-case in variable names, kConstant > > versus UPPER_CASE_CONSTANT. > > It only deals with indentation. Style on data members, function names etc. > is not touched. Kris wrote an exellent set coding convetions for BRAT once. That is still valid. > > Being there done that. Do we get to vote on each feature? (Yawn...) > > > > > > > A link to its sourceforge web page is put on the regular private area > > > computing page: http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/brahms/WWW/private/computing.html > > > The direct link is: http://astyle.sourceforge.net > > > > > > Do try it out!!! > > > > Don't waste your time. Go and write some good code instead. > > Depending on your taste, chose from any of the two statements above. May I propose an alternative to both of your: USE EMACS!!! (I believe Konstantin uses Emacs, but I may not remember right). Ups, sorry - I turned a bit religious there. No, really, I highly recommend using Emacs. You avoid all that crap of having external programs to do your formatting, since Emacs formats on the fly, and you do get some help so that you may relax your (some times) overheated brain :-( And to you Windoze users: There's nothing wrong with writting your code in Emacs, and compiling it using Windoze Visual C++ (or is that F**k++?). Ups, now BRAT and ROOT is through compiling, and my batch job done - that means back to work. See ya' Yours, Christian ----------------------------------------------------------- Holm Christensen Phone: (+45) 35 35 96 91 Sankt Hansgade 23, 1. th. Office: (+45) 353 25 305 DK-2200 Copenhagen N Web: www.nbi.dk/~cholm Denmark Email: cholm@nbi.dk
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 07 2001 - 16:44:15 EST