Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] 80-chars limit

[Markus M. <ma...@oe...>]

On Sun, 05 Oct 2003, Nicolas Cannasse wrote:
> I agree that short lines are better but I dislike to break some code into
> several expressions (or shorten identifier name or other tricks) only to
> stick to that outdated 80 chars limit.

It's outdated in the sense that our displays and printers can handle
better than this. The question is whether humans can. Enforcing this
(or another) limit keeps people from writing unreadable spaghetti code.
Unless you use extremely long identifiers, which should be discouraged
in any case, 80 chars should be more than enough.

> I agree everyone is free to use its
> own text editor - in 80 rows text mode or in 1600x1200 pixels graphics
> mode - but when it turns into adding lines jumps into a nice expression only
> because there is a damn paranthesis on the 81th row that's troublesome.

And if there is just one damn parenthesis on the 82nd row, or 83rd, or...

Get the drift? ;-)

> Now, after having a quick look at some ExtLib sources, it appears
> that the 80chars limit is rarely overriden, so modifying some lines
> here and there should not be so big thing if it keeps further people
> flames away :-)

You are absolutely right :-)

Regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Mottl          http://www.oefai.at/~markus          ma...@oe...