27.7 Layout

20200105

Keep lines to less then 80 characters for easier reading and fitting on a printed page.

Align curly braces so that an opening curly brace is on a line by itself. This is at odds with many style guides. My motivation is that the open and close curly braces belong to each other more so than the closing curly brace belonging to the keyword (while in the example). The extra white space helps to reduce code clutter. This style also makes it easier to comment out, for example, just the line containing the while and still have valid syntax. We tend not to need to foucs so much any more on reducing the number of lines in our code, as we had to with punch cards, so we can now avoid Egyptian brackets.

Preferred

while (blue\_sky())
{
  open\_the\_windows()
  do\_some\_research()
}
retireForTheDay()

Alternative

while (blue\_sky()) {
  open\_the\_windows()
  do\_some\_research()
}
retireForTheDay()

If a code block contains a single statement, then curly braces remain useful to emphasise the limit of the code block; however, some prefer to drop them.

Preferred

while (blue\_sky()) 
{
  do\_some\_research()
}
retire\_for\_the\_day()

Alternatives

while (blue\_sky())
  do\_some\_research()
retire\_for\_the\_day()

while (blue\_sky()) do\_some\_research()
retire\_for\_the\_day()

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