Bletcherous Bowdlerization of C

[Marc San Soucie]

Blair Houghton writes:

> Geoff Kuenning writes:

> > The following little program demonstrates a problem found in the XSend()
> > routine of XlibInt.c:
> >
> >	main ()
> >	    {
> >	    int i = 0;
> >	    while (i < 3)
> >		{
> >		int j = 4;
> >		printf ("i = %d, j = %d\n", i, j);
> >		i++;
> >		j++;
> >		}
> >	    }

> Digression:  does anyone know where this style (having the
> statements aligned with the braces that enclose them) came
> from?  Before a few months ago I'd never seen it, and now
> I've seen it in a dozen programs.  Who's fomenting this
> bletcherous bowdlerization of my beloved C?

Ahem. Well, back in the days when C was new, or like, you know, when C was new
enough that none of us had read any books about it other than K&R because
nobody else had written any books about it, code formatting style was a matter
to be resolved on one's own, because there weren't enough impassioned advocates
of any one particular style to sway individual thought. So, drawing upon my
months of experience with that scurrilous trollop of a language called PL/M, I
developed a coding style which looks surprisingly similar to the fragment
above, though to my eye there's a blank line missing between the two '}'s.

I hold no pretense that I was the first to write code like that, nor do I
believe that I have persuaded more than perhaps two humans to convert to that
style from their own initial preferences. I'm afraid, dear impassioned one,
that yon so-called bletcherous sight is due less to conspiracy than to the
personal tastes of scads of coders who have simply, and independently,
discovered the One True Way.

    Marc San Soucie
    Portland, Oregon
    marcs at slc.com

----

	if (this == what_you_like) {
		puts("Ick. Repulsive. Archaic. Forget it, pal.");
	}

----