Re: [PATCH] add a trivial patch style checker

From: Julio M. Merino Vidal
Date: Tue May 29 2007 - 12:21:25 EST


On 29/05/2007, at 18:12, Joel Schopp wrote:

+ if(!($prevline=~/\/\*\*/) && length($lineforcounting) > 80){
Actually, I think this should be "> 79" (after stripping a .diff's
control column), since the cursor may move to the 81th column when
editing an 80-col line - which is what we want to avoid, no?
80 tends to work for me because of that "if on 80 then don't wrap until
there is another character" behaviour of most terminals. Anyone else
with a firm opinion.

I think 80 is good. What the specific number is does not matter much, we all have screens wider than 80 characters. The point is just to have a number that prevents really long lines and prevents people from indenting too many levels past our minds ability to keep up. We've already all been coding to 80, and it happens to be a nice round number we can all remember and love. The only reason I see to select 79 is that prime numbers are generally cooler than other numbers.

We do have screens wider than 80 characters, but almost all the time I spend in terminal windows, they are set to 24x80 (the default size). It is a matter of habit, and I bet I'm not alone. Hence, 80 is "annoying" not only because patches will wrap, but also because in some editors the 80th character will also wrap.

Just my 2 cents,

--
Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmerino@xxxxxxxxxx>


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