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From: Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: Source code representation (was: code generation for the ternary operator).
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 07:45:40 -0700 (PDT)
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Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> Daniel Pitts wrote:
>=20
> [snip]
>=20
> >I've often thought about a "new" way of representing code, where the=20
> >logical structure is stored in not-necessarily-human-editable format,=20
> >but the tools for managing the code allow it to be presented in a format=
=20
> >chosen by the particular maintainer.
>=20
>      One problem is whether you can replicate my way.  I like my code
> formatted a certain way.  If your tool can not do this, I will not
> like using it.  I will avoid it if at all possible.
>=20
>      Other people feel the same way about their formats.  Miss very
> many possibilities, and you will have bad will from [|potential]
> users.
>=20
>      I was wading through the editor settings for Visual Studio and
> ended up having to shut off a lot of the formatting, because the
> formatting done was not to my taste.
>=20
>      I was just looking through the editor settings for Dreamweaver.
> It does not do what I want.  <sigh>

For workaday programmers, house style is also an issue.  Whatever your part=
icular preference, at work you have to put the braces and indentation where=
 the boss says to.  (Ah, I see Roedy made the same point.)

But prettifiers exist and are quite common and highly customizable.  Some s=
hops take advantage of this, letting programmers goof up on style a little =
and cleaning it up on the way in to the VCS.

Regardless, I don't know that there is an intermediate format to store sour=
ce code that improves upon, well, source code.  The usual intermediate form=
at is object code.  Decompilers certainly exist and work well.

As for your particular predilection to store invalid code in source, well, =
that's just bad practice.  Oh, not while it's sitting in your editor or IDE=
, but that use case doesn't call for an intermediate format.  The one that =
could, were it not for the aforementioned superiority of simply storing the=
 damn source, what's the big effing deal?, is when you share the code, at w=
hich point you certainly won't want non-syntactic code going forth. DBTB - =
Don't Break The Build!

--=20
Lew