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> where 'true' is split onto a newline, that naive grep misses it. This misses the point, same as Linus (which i honestly find surprising)... 80 width lines is
by tomxor 6y ago
> where 'true' is split onto a newline, that naive grep misses it.
This misses the point, same as Linus (which i honestly find surprising)... 80 width lines is a target to try to achieve _naturally_, if someone is splitting code by inserting unnatural breaks then they are trying too hard, OR there could be various other legitimate reasons like very long function names and naturally verbose PL syntax that make even longer line widths unreasonable. Regardless of width constraints many people will split the arguments of extremely long function signatures onto multiple lines out of preference anyway, then grep will still get stuck without more caring regex.
These arguments always emerge out of someone misinterpreting guides as absolutes. No one is arguing we need to stick to 80 column terminals otherwise everyone would autowrap their commits and we'd have horribly unreadable breaks everywhere. 80 is historical, but trying to keep code width short does improve legibility, 80 just turned out to be a pretty good human standard as well.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zapzupnz 6y ago> This misses the point, same as Linus (which i honestly find surprising)... 80 width lines is a target to try to achieve _naturally_, The post is about changing code style formatting rules for code that goes into the Linux kernel. Not guidelines, rules. The tools in question, I presume to be a linter or formatter, complained noisily about line length prior to the adoption of this change. It's not about someone misinterpreting guides as absolutes. It's very much about absolutes, in this case, that serve as guides.
- tomxor 6y ago> The post is about changing code style formatting rules for code that goes into the Linux kernel. Not guidelines, rules. Then it is about absolutes, the rule is absolute, but 80 width is a guide... being used as a rule. I'm surprised the first to challenge the rule is about grepability and not how detrimental it is to legibility to use this as a hard rule.