Subject: Re: Parentheses and indenting, etc.
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/07/25
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.programming,comp.lang.c++
Message-ID: <3078809742308429@naggum.no>


* Fred Haineux
| Luckily, many programmers eventually realize that there is a pretty-print
| program ("cb" for the unix heads), and it can be set to produce the exact
| style of indenting that is preferred.

* Walt Howard
| You can't do this in a large project.  The reason is, you check this code
| in.  Often it becomes necessary to "diff" two versions to see "what
| change made it break".  If someone reformatted the whole thing and
| checked it in, its impossible to tell what REAL changes were made between
| those two versions.

it occurred to me that the problem is that "diff" is run on the text
representation of the code.  had it been possible "diff" the _code_, each
programmer could check his code in and out in his own textual style.

#\Erik
-- 
Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM: "man shall think.  machines shall work."
William H. Gates, III, Microsoft: "man shall work.  machines shall not."