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From: "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Case dependence and coding standards
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 18:37:58 -0500
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Date: 2003-06-03T18:37:58-05:00
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Robert A Duff wrote in message ...
>Vinzent Hoefler <ada.rocks@jlfencey.com> writes:
>> Well, I expect a compiler to *read* the source, not actually *write*
>> it.
>
>Sure, that's what we're all used to.  But we expect our editors and
>pretty-printers and CM systems and so forth to modify our source code.
>Why do we trust some programs over others to modify our code?


Immediate feedback in an IDE, as opposed to some batch process where the
changes (for good or evil) are hidden away.

I *don't* allow pretty-printers and CM systems to modify my code; my
experience is that they make it worse as often as they make it better.
(The inability to turn off Rational's pretty printer in their editor is
a great frustration to me.) I don't even think it is possible to write a
pretty printer that will do a good job in general; such programs can't
know when to line up declarations and when not to; when to leave
comments alone and when to reformat them; and so on. (And I've tried to
write one; you'll find it in Janus/Ada.)

So I certainly would not want or allow a compiler to modify my code. The
IDE can do such things (but it needs to be configurable in many ways,
and it has to allow writing whatever makes sense, even if it violates
some rule in the IDE's formatter).

            Randy.