CocoaDev

I’m just curious how people (that care about coding styles) actually code:

APPL - Apple’s documentation, K+R - (Kernighan & Ritchie), ABY - Anguish/Buck/Yacktman, RS - Richard Stevens, ST - Smalltalk, AH - Aaron Hillegass

I don’t have a copy of Aaron Hillegass’s latest and greatest, so if someone with time and a copy of his book is interested in filling in how AH codes that would be nice

spacing assuming i has not been initialized

(i=0;i<10;i++) [1] (i=0; i<10; i++) [5] ABY* (i = 0; i < 10; i++) [14] K+R, ABY*, RS, AH ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ ) [1]

*’ since this book was written by three authors, I’m not surprised that the coding style was not totally uniform (overall the general style was pretty consistent)

if brackets spacing issues between if and “(“ is addresssed in the for/if/while spacing section, this section is only concerned with bracket placement

if (i < 10) { [12] K+R, ABY, RS, AH

}

if (i < 10) [8] { }

if (i < 10) [1] { }

else brackets

} [1.25] else {

} else { [9.75] K+R, ABY, RS

} else [9] {

} else                           [1]
{

for/if/while spacing

while(test) [8] ABY* while (test) [12] K+R, ABY*, RS, AH while ( test ) [1]

*’ here again the guys who wrote Cocoa Programming have different styles

method brackets

• (void)someMethod { [5] }

• (void)someMethod [15] K+R, ABY, RS, AH { }

• (void)someMethod [1] { }

method spacing

• (void)someMethod:(id)object [16] ABY, APPL*
• (void)someMethod:(id) object [4]
• (void) someMethod:(id)object [1]

*’ most of Apple’s headers use this method spacing

message spacing

[target fooWithObject: bar] [4] ST* [target fooWithObject:bar] [12] ABY**, APPL, AH

• Note the space after the colon. The syntax and semantics for message expressions in ObjC were modeled after the syntax and semantics for message expressions in Smalltalk, where a space after the colon is widely regarded as a best practice. See, for example, Kent Beck, Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns; Skublics, Klimas and Thomas, Smalltalk with Style; Simon Lewis, The Art and Science of Smalltalk; and Chamond Lui, Smalltalk, Objects and Design.

** This style was was adopted in two terrific Cocoa textbooks—Anguish, Buck and Yacktman, Cocoa Programming and Aaron Hillegass, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X —as well as recent Apple Developer Documentation on Cocoa conventions.

function spacing

srand( time ) [2] srand(time) [17] K+R, ABY, RS srand (time) [2]

[Topic]

Open brackets on a line by itself is called K+R style, and the other way is GNU style, I think… I can never remember which is which. Bzzt wrong way round

Something I think not mentioned here is that you can use different styles as a kind of documentation, indicating whether a function is on the periphery of your code, for instance, or called routinely. This can be useful later when determining where you may want to focus optimization: profiling helps, but it’s nice if you have some notes to yourself, and it also helps if you want to change the implementation, you know whether or not a bug will show up right away or not. It is by no means a subsitute or stand alone practice – just one more aid on top of many others. I think this a horrible idea, to put it bluntly. That’s what well-written comments are for. When you get hit by a bus (or find a new job), the poor schlub who has to finish/maintain your code is going to have no idea why you use different styles in different places. If you use your effort to put comments (like // this is untested ), then everybody will be able to figure it out.

Also note that K+R style is much more compact than GNU. Many times books will use K+R just to save pages, regardless of how the authors really code.

To keep this poll clean I condensed DimitriT’s answers into the total results above. Hope this is ok.