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Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console

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On 4/11/2013 2:11 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:43:39 -0400, Eric Sosman
> <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> See the matrices?  They're still there, if you sort of tilt your
>> head to the side and squint a little; it may help if you're slightly
>> astigmatic.  See the right-hand sides in their systematic little
>> dance?  Not I, not with all the head-tilting my vertebrae can manage.
>> Somebody's insistence on his own notions of formatting (as embodied
>> in the mechanical formatter) transformed my code from crystal-clear
>> to opaque and ugly.
>
>       Of course, it can go the other way around, too.  Sometimes,
> formatters do help clean up code.  [...]

     That, I think, should be their main purpose and use case.
Refactor a bunch of deeply-nested code into a method of its
own, and a mechanical reformatter is a great convenience in
re-adjusting the nesting levels.  Throw a loop or an if() around
something, ditto.  And, of course, every so often you encounter
some wretched piece of code where twenty different programmers
have used thirty different styles -- the mechanical cleaner-
upper can be as helpful as forty maids with forty mops.

     But I truly think casual use of reformatters is a bad idea.
Some folks require them at check-in ("Unless thy code pass
unchanged through the reformatter, Lo! I say unto thee that it
shall not enter the Kingdom of Checkin"), and some apply them
routinely at check-out ("Nobody should care what the code in the
repository looks like, because everyone reformats it to his own
style when working on it anyhow").  Both practices, it seems to
me, are capable of destroying or at least obscuring information.[*]

     [*] For an extreme example of code that would be damaged by
mechanical reformatters, note that Whitespace code embedded in
Java code (perhaps for steganographic purposes) would be quite
unlikely to survive Java-oriented reformatting.  :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_%28programming_language%29

-- 
Eric Sosman
esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid

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Inserting Multiple Lines from Console subhabangalore@gmail.com - 2013-04-08 06:59 -0700
  Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Joerg Meier <joergmmeier@arcor.de> - 2013-04-08 17:04 +0200
    Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2013-04-08 14:10 -0700
      Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-04-08 15:10 -0700
        Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console x@x.com (znôrt) - 2013-04-09 01:08 +0200
          Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-04-08 17:59 -0700
            Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console x@x.com (znôrt) - 2013-04-09 08:46 +0200
            Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom2@eastlink.ca> - 2013-04-09 05:39 -0300
              Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2013-04-09 23:04 +0000
              Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console x@x.com (znôrt) - 2013-04-10 19:45 +0200
                Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2013-04-10 14:43 -0400
                Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-04-11 11:11 -0700
                Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2013-04-11 15:05 -0400
  Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console lipska the kat <"nospam at neversurrender dot co dot uk"> - 2013-04-08 16:21 +0100
  Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console markspace <markspace@nospam.nospam> - 2013-04-08 09:56 -0700
  Re: Inserting Multiple Lines from Console lipska the kat <"nospam at neversurrender dot co dot uk"> - 2013-04-09 08:28 +0100

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