Braces

Thu Feb 7 17:04:38 AEST 1991

In article <2324 at inews.intel.com> bhoughto at pima.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton)
writes:
% ... I'd like to know where it came from, not the reasons
% or rationalizations for its use:  those I'll get from the
% source.

The jargon file, version 2.5.1, has this to say on the matter of
indent styles:

<indent style> [C programmers] n. The rules one uses to lay out code
   in a readable fashion; a subject of <holy wars>.  There are four
   major C indent styles, as described below; all have the aim of
   making it easier for the reader to visually track the scope of
   control constructs.  The significant variable is the placement of
   { and } with respect to the statement(s) they enclose and the
   guard (if, while, or do) on the block, if any.

   "K&R style" --- Named after Kernighan & Ritchie, because the
   examples in <K&R> are formatted this way. Also called "kernel
   style" because the UNIX kernel is written in it.  The basic indent
   shown here is 8 spaces (or 1 tab) per level; 4 is occasionally seen
   but much less common.

     if (cond) {
             <body>
     }

   "Allman style" --- Named for Eric Allman, a Berkeley hacker who
   wrote a lot of the BSD utilities in it (it is sometimes called
   "BSD style"). Resembles normal indent style in Pascal and
   Algol.  Basic indent per level shown here is 8 spaces, but 4 is
   just as common (esp.  in C++ code).

     if (cond)
     {
             <body>
     }

   "Whitesmiths style" --- popularized by the examples that came
   with Whitesmiths C, an early commercial C compiler. Basic indent
   per level shown here is 8 spaces, but 4 is occasionally seen.

     if (cond)
             {
             <body>
             }

   "GNU style" --- Used throughout GNU EMACS and the Free Software
   Foundation code, and just about nowhere else. Indents are always 4
   spaces per level, with { and } "centered" between levels.

     if (cond)
       {
         <body>
       }

   What style one uses is very much a matter of personal choice, but
   one should be consistent within any one software package.
   Statistically, surveys have shown the Allman and Whitesmiths styles
   to be the most common, with about equal `mind share'.  K&R used to
   be nearly universal, but is now much less common (the opening brace
   tends to get lost against the right paren of the guard part in an
   if or while, which is a Bad Thing).
________________
George V. Reilly   `Brace yerself, Bridget'  gvr at cs.brown.edu  +1(401)863-7684
uunet!brunix!gvr   gvr at browncs.bitnet	Box 1910, Brown U, Prov, RI 02912