Re: [patch] more comment cleanups

Mark Kettenis
2011-01-03T08:05:02Z

> Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2011 08:33:59 +0400
> From: Joel Brobecker <brobecker@adacore.com>
>
> > So what do others think about source lines over 70 columns?
>
> Enforcing a maximum length of 70 characters seems awfully low to me.
> It's fine if someone decides to use 70 characters for his comments,
> of even his code, but I think that 76 or 78 would give better results.
> I even allow myself to go up to 80 when splitting a line makes it
> particularly ugly and hard to read...

70 characters really isn't that low for comments that start in the
first column; look at a properly typeset book and count the number of
characters per line. However, I fully agree with you that it
shouldn't be strictly enforced. If for example, it means that you end
up wrapping a single line comment such that you end up with a single
word on the next line I strongly prefer not to wrap and keep the
comment on one line such that it takes up less vertical space.

The same holds for code. If I can keep things on a single line, I'll
attempt to do so, even if it means I'll get a little bit closer to the
80 character "hard" limit. It's one of the reasons I never believed
in running tools like indent to automatically format source code.