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From: fred@genesis.demon.co.uk (Lawrence Kirby)
Subject: Re: Porting (was ADA and Pascal etc)
Date: 1997/11/02
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Date: 1997-11-02T00:00:00+00:00
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In article <63d5l4$tub$1@helios.crest.nt.com>
           kaz@helios.crest.nt.com "Kaz Kylheku" writes:

...

>What's worse is that mixed declarations and statements are likely going to be
>part of the new C language.

Actually that finally resolves one of the biggest bugbears I have when
writing C. My experience has shown clearly that localising declarations
can be a big win for readability. Currently I have to use extra { }'s to do
that in some cases (notably for switch cases). With C9X I will finally be
able to write code in a natural way according to my preferred coding style.
Of course like may other features of C it will be possible to abuse this
to horrific effect. Nevertheless overall it is a win for the language.

>Ada makes so much more sense by requiring data declarations to precede the
>function body. Only scatter-brained programmers see a stylistic advantage in
>declarations interspersed with statements.

Perhaps I'm scatter-brained. I see advantage for locality of scope. This
also helps in specifying invariants with careful use of const.

>It's perhaps a remnant of brain
>damage inflicted by programming in BASIC. I try to even avoid declarations at
>the beginnings of nested blocks, even though C allows it. It's not necessary.

Of course it is not necessary but it can be very beneficial when used
sensibly.

-- 
-----------------------------------------
Lawrence Kirby | fred@genesis.demon.co.uk
Wilts, England | 70734.126@compuserve.com
-----------------------------------------