Re: [9fans] Plan 9's style(6) manual page

[Jules Merit <jules.merit.eurocorp.us@gmail.com>]

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That sums I.T. up

On Sat, Apr 7, 2018, 9:02 AM <8halfan@airmail.cc> wrote:

> Just an amateur C programmer looking for answers. My main inspirations
> for code
> style is K&R 2nd edition and I'm curious about the instructions in Plan
> 9's
> style(6) manual page (for reference,
> http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/6/style). I've
> tried to think about the motivations, but not everything is as clear as
> it
> seems.
>
> Going through style(6):
>
> > no white space before opening braces.
> > no white space after the keywords `if', `for', `while', etc.
>
> This is unique to Plan 9, it seems. I can't come up with a reason --
> both BSD
> and Linux style use whitespace, and K&R does too, while Plan 9 doesn't.
> Why?
>
> > no braces around single-line blocks (e.g., `if', `for', and `while'
> > bodies).
>
> Apologies, but I'll have to Go and do it anyway :)
>
> > automatic variables (local variables inside a function) are never
> > initialized at declaration.
>
> Why not? In order to reduce visual clutter? It seems like this should be
> handled
> case-by-case: in some situations this just wastes lines:
>
>         int foo;
>         foo = 12;
>         func("blah", &foo);
>
> > follow the standard idioms: use `x < 0' not `0 > x', etc.
>
> I'm guessing this is for consistency and more common coincidence with
> the flow
> of spoken language.
>
> > don't write `!strcmp' (nor `!memcmp', etc.) nor `if(memcmp(a, b, c))';
> > always
> > explicitly compare the result of string or memory comparison with zero
> > using a
> > relational operator.
>
> Was that a common programmer error? cmp functions should return 0 if the
> arguments are identical. Smells like disaster in baking!
>
> > and this is not an exhaustive list
>
> Is there anything missing?
>
> That's all. Thanks for your time.
>
>

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