My $0.02 is that it should be irrelevant, the language should be stored as an Abstract Syntax Tree and pretty printed into whatever whitespace decorated format the current programmer finds most interpretible, perhaps borrowing some formatting quirks from the principal author of the code as an identifying tag.

Legislating programming language whitespace is certainly better than wasting years arguing about it, but there's really no reason to be arguing about it at all.  The only reason it comes up is because source code revision systems are too stupid to store and compare the source code revisions, they store and compare text file revisions and report differences in white space, and many other nilpotent changes, as if they were source code changes.

-- rec --

On 9/11/06, Owen Densmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Wow, I LOVE this!  I know Ken from Sun days and he's one of those
refreshing thinkers.

We (our multimedia team at Sun) attempted a nifty stunt briefly for a
large C++ project:  At SCCS/CVS/SVN "check-in" run the code through a
pretty printer using a common format.  It also allowed folks to
format in their own style, but the "official" version had a base format.

BTW: This was one of my main concerns with python: it cannot be
pretty-printed, at least at the block level.  There is no "format"
key in the IDEs.  Shutter!  Interestingly enough, btw, some folks
feel that python *does* just what Ken suggests...it produces errors
if you badly indent!!

     -- Owen

Owen Densmore   http://backspaces.net


On Sep 11, 2006, at 10:16 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:

> So which is "better" coding style, foo[ 0 ] + bar[ 0 ] or foo[0]+bar
> [0]? Where exactly should your block delimiters go and should they
> be indented? Here's a chap who suggests bypassing whitespace
> debates by building the coding style into the language: if you
> don't follow the style you generate a compiler error. Might seem
> crazy, but I actually find it quite compelling, particularly for
> projects where I'm collaborating on common code.
>
> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=74230
>
> Robert
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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