Thread: indenting code - different styles

You're asking a question there is no real definitive answer to. No one on this board should care what indentation style you use when you post code here provided that you stay consistent. If you mix and match styles with no reason, then people will assume you're just sloppy. If you care about my personal opinion, use only the first or second one provided in the wikipedia article.

We had a poll here on tabs vs spaces. More people chose spaces, but they couldn't agree on the number of spaces. End result: Use whatever you want.

> is this bad indentation ?
Yes, closing braces should line up at the indentation level they're meant to be closing off.
But then again, that particular style isn't listed on wiki.

But MacGyver is correct, nobody will care so long as you''re consistent in whatever style you choose.

I prefer what they call the "Allman" style (though I've always known it as the Java or OO style as nearly all OO code uses it):

Code:

start_of_block
{
    ....
} //end of block

I switched to this style from using K&R because it is more easy to find during scanning where your blocks start and end, minimizing the "missing brace" headaches; however your whitespace count goes up considerably (which is why I had been using K&R up until then, but then realized I rather have 200+ lines of whitespace than 200+ lines of potential headache).
Also, as you can see I've used 4 spaces to indent there, usually anywhere between 2 and 8 are good to use as indents.

I suggest you find a style that you like and can easily read; regardless if it has a name or is in wiki.

Here's an example of my coding style. I prefere 3 spaces, no tabs, so that I don't have to touch the horz scroll bar.
I like to have the brackets on their own line (with a few exceptions) making it more open. (I don't like clutered code.)

Code:

// By ME in August of 2007.

char* TestFunction(DWORD dwAmount)
{
   char *pszRet = new char[dwAmount];
   int a;
   for(a = 0; a < dwAmount; a++)
   {
      if(a &#37; 2 == 0)
         pszRet[a] = '#';
      else
         pszRet[a] = '@';
   }
   return pszRet;
}

int main(void)
{
   MessageBox(0, TestFunction(5), "Test", MB_ICONINFORMATION);
   return 1;
}

// End of file.

Consistent, but the indentation goes leftward instead of rightward.

Actually, after reading that a couple of times I become fine with it. The only catch is that it is probably a pain to write without special editor support (you need to re-indent everything every time you introduce a new indent level).

I code in the Allman style, although to be quite honest I never knew it had a name until today, when I just read that Wikipedia article. The styles I have seen most often are K&R and Allman.

I like Allman because I like whitespace. I believe that whitespace should be used liberally (as well as comments in code), so that someone can very easily look at your code and understand what is going on. I think the Allman style is best suited for that.

I agree with DavidP, whitespace is good.

Once you start programming in larger organization, you'll probably find that the company or group mandates the style to some degree. Some companie/groups will have a very basic set of rules, others will state that your naming standard, as well as indentation rules, and perhaps also how and when certain constructs should be used.

Obviously, if you have to add/modify code to an existing project, the idea is to "fit in", rather than write your own style, as has already been said.

If you are writing your own code, it should, as has also been said, be consistent, because that makes it easier to read and follow, which is the entire goal of indentation and other text/code-formatting. This applies to native languages as well - there is a section of about 200 pages in James Joyce's Ulysses that has no punctuation or capitalization [at least not used to mark beginning of new sentence] at all. It is MUCH harder to read than text with punctuation and capitalization.

Part of your style will be naming variables, the use of upper/lower case characters, as well as how you use whitespaces to indicate what part of code belongs with which. For example, a variable can be called "n", "name", "Name", "NameOfPersonInstallingSoftware", etc. "n" is obviously less informative than "NameOfPersonInstallingSoftware", but the latter may actually become hard to use too, sicne it's so long. The alternative of "nameofpersononstallingsoftware" is obviously much less readable. Using a good average between "excessively long" and "too short" names is what you want to aim for. Depending on the circumstances, the right answer will vary quite a bit. If you have many variables in a function, you may need longer names, more descriptive names, compared to a function that is very short, and the concept is easy to grasp without further naming hints.

There is hungarian notation, which is used in Windows, where the first part of the name is indicating the type of variable, e.g. pszName would tell us (without looking at the declaration) that this is a "Pointer to String that is Zero terminated", and it's the name of something, pRectRegion would be a "pointer to Rectangle type", and that it's a region.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation

You may also have a look at "Programming Style" to get a bit more info.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_style

A good style is helpful for others to read your code easier.

--
Mats

I usually code in K&R, but I never knew that's what it was called untill a little while ago. I wrote in allman style when I first started to learn C++ though.

Originally Posted by matsp

There is hungarian notation

*hiss*