Re: Code Formatters

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Dave Smith says

"Or maybe it would have been useful to have included the Ada
Style Guide (the "bible" as far as I am concerned) as part of
the ANSI standard. Them we would all have code that conformed to
the same layout."

Dubious -- first, you could never have got agreement on a specific set
of rules. Second, and perhaps more important, a good set of style
guidelines is just that, a set of guidelines, not absoulute rules,
and many of them are occasionally broken for good reasons.

For example, in the GNAT world, we enforce the -gnatf set of
rules, oops, I mean -gnatg, with the compiler considering violations
to be errors (for details, have a look at style.adb i the GNAT sources).

But the GNAT style involves MANY other rules that are not enforced
mechanically (they are mostly enforced by self discipline, and then
I check all checkins to make sure they meet the style rules, early
on I used to find many deviations, now everyone really knows the rules
and there is rarely need for correction, but that does not mean that
these style reuls are oebyed 100%