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From: craig@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Craig Wylie)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re:  questions from using lint
Message-ID: <169@comp.lancs.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 19-May-86 08:33:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: comp.169
Posted: Mon May 19 08:33:41 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 23-May-86 23:45:17 EDT
References: <501@brl-smoke.ARPA> <797@bentley.UUCP> <456@hropus.UUCP>
Reply-To: craig@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Craig Wylie)
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University, UK.
Lines: 33

In article <456@hropus.UUCP> ka@hropus.UUCP writes:
>> Yet another convention, not endorsed by any language I know, is to dispense
>> with the braces and let the indentation alone tell the compiler how to
>> interpret the program.  (I came up with this idea after an argument on the
>> "correct" place to put the braces.)
>
>I first encountered this idea about 8 years ago, when Dave Korn used it
>in a specialized language for data checking, and it is a good one.
>
>Using braces to indicated the structure of a program results in code that
>is quite difficult to read.  (Try removing all indentation from any C
>program you choose and see how readable the result is.)  Of course
>sensible programmers use indentation to indicate the structure of the
>program to the reader.  So from the reader's point of view braces are

>Fortunately, grouping by indentation has finally been adopted by at least
>on language.  See the article on "Modcap" in the March issue of Sigplan
>Notices.

It is also the method used in the languages OCCAM and Miranda. The method of
grouping follows something called the offside rule, I will post the
reference (read dig it out of my filling cabinet) if any body mails me for
it.


Craig.

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