this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Why is multiple levels of indentation bad?

IDK, but if the reason is "to break stuff into multiple functions", then I'm not necessarily writing yet another single-use function just to avoid writing a comment, especially in time critical applications. Did that with a text parser that could get text formatting from a specifically written XML file, but mainly due to it being way less time critical, and had a lot of reused code via templates.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's important to remember that Linus is primarily writing about C code formatting. C doesn't have things that tend to create more deeply nested structures, such as a formal class syntax, or nested functions.

Going too deep is still bad--as zea notes, it's an indication of control structures run amok--but the exact number is dependent on the language and the context.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

And you never include the switch-case-block indentation levels.

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