Re: Indenting the source

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Ed Beroset wrote:
>
> > Therefore, while HPA's line specifies more (which is a good thing, 
> > IMHO) the only actual *differences* are as follows:
> >
> > Ed: -ci8 -nlp
> > HPA: -ci4 -lp
> >
> > To borrow an example from the indent man pages, the difference would 
> > look like this with -ci8 -nlp:
> >
> > p1 = first_procedure (second_procedure (p2, p3),
> >         third_procedure (p4, p5));
> >
> > With -ci4 -lp in effect the code looks like this:
> >
> > p1 = first_procedure (second_procedure (p2, p3),
> >                       third_procedure (p4, p5));
> >
> >
> > Because these are minor differences, I could endorse either, but I 
> > would very much like to have one consistently applied style 
> > throughout, no matter what that style.
>
> OK, both of those I feel fairly strongly about.  I really want the 
> difference between statements like if, for, and while and function 
> calls, and NASM, like most compilers, is really way too nested to be 
> well handled by an indentation level of 8 and still have space for 
> comments.
>
> Linus doesn't believe in comments, so he advocates indentation by 8.  To 
> quote Andrew Morton, "however, I do."

I think you may misunderstand the difference.  The -ci8 is just the 
*continuation* indent, meaning a single long line of code is wrapped and 
indented by 8.  The -i4 means that the normal indentation is still 4, as 
we both have indicated we prefer.  Most of the code seems to be in that 
style already.

Also, by preferring -lp instead of -nlp, you actually leave less room 
for comments, not more.  The example statements above illustrate both of 
these points.  The -lp version has the function arguments lined up 
vertically, and the -nlp -ci8 just indents the second line by 8 spaces 
instead as many as it takes to line up the parameters.

> If this is OK with everyone else, I'll run indent over the sources and 
> check those in as a separate checkin.  It's still a flag day -- you 
> effectively lose all change tracking across the reformat -- but at least 
> there are no other changes involved.

Yes, I'd strongly endorse this, but only if we agree first on which 
style to use.  As you say, it's a flag day, and so we'd better only do 
it once!

Ed



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