Just A Summary : A quick Javascript formatting tip

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Philip Newton

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:34:16 -0500

That reminds me of a coding convention I’ve seen for Pascal, where – as in Perl – semicolon is used as a statement separator (rather than as a statement terminator, as – for example – in C).

So one place put semicolons at the beginning of each line but the first, rather than at the end of each line but the last. (The latter would have been legal in most places, but it would have introduced an empty statement.)

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by rhesa

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:43:33 -0500

reminds me a bit of Perlish coding style (mentioned briefly on PerlMonks by brian d foy).

Maybe it’ll grow on you, but I think it’s icky.

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by nicholas a. evans

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:40:51 -0500

I’ve been using the same trick when formatting my SQL. e.g:

select
  a.foo     as a_foo
  , b.bar   as b_foo
  , c.blatz as c_foo
from
  table1 a
  inner join      table2 b on a.id   = b.a_id
  left outer join table3 c on b.c_id = c.id
where
  a.foo is not null
  and b.bacon = "chunky"

... using the same technique with the join operators and the boolean operators. I’ve found that it not only makes it easier to comment out a line or add a new line, but it also makes it easier (for me) to read than most other SQL formatting techniques. It’s still mildly annoying whenever you deal with the first item in the list though: you need to make sure to remove that leading join operator (comma, etc). If I’m editing the query a lot, I’ll add a “dummy” item to the front, just to alleviate that specific pain. e.g:

where true
  and a.foo is not null
  and b.bacon = "chunky"

But I haven’t used this style as comprehensively as you have (“pretty much everywhere else that I’ve got a comma separated list of things”), or as the Perlish coding style… yet. :-)

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Piers Cawley

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 16:21:48 -0500

The ‘Perlish coding style’ is definitely a misnomer and also barking mad. If you have leading punctuation on every line, then you start to lose the differences. If you keep your semicolons as statement terminators, then the presence of a , tells you that the new line is in some sense a continuation of the previous line. Same goes for things like:

clone[property] 
  = YAHOO.lang.isObject(source[property])
    ? deepCopy(source[property])
    : source[property];

symbol on the first non-blank column? This line is a continuation of the previous one. Leading semicolons would break that rule.

It’s definitely weird the first few times you see it, but it doesn’t take long before code that doesn’t follow this convention starts looking odd.

Now, if I can just persuade Steve Yegge’s excellent js2-mode.el to get the indentation right first time when I’m writing javascript in this style…

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Asbjørn Ulsberg

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:35:58 -0500

I use this coding convention in SQL, because it’s possible to vertically align stuff so it looks neat, but with all other languages I think it just looks strange.

I’ve tried to write code like that in every C-inspired language I’ve ever written, but it has never grown on me and it probably never will. I just don’t like it. :-)

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Eric Suen

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:49:55 -0500

Hi, you should try Spket IDE, Its JavaScript editor has an option “Report Unnecessary Trailing Comma”, and it has a very powerful JavaScript formatter which has an option “remove unnecessary trailing comma”...

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Brian Dillard

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:58:54 -0500

This convention was a lifesaver back in the days before there were any decent IE debugging tools I used it for years when I was a JavaScript soloist. But when I started working on large teams at Fortune 500 companies, everybody else freaked out on me about it and I had to stop. Luckily, I’m back to projects where I work on my own and can follow any coding convention I wish.

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Piers Cawley

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:36:23 -0500

@Eric: Thanks, but I have 20 years of Emacs; I’m unlikely to go changing now.

@Brian: Dang! So I’m not original. I’m still in the process of retraining my fingers.

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Bjorn

Fri, 09 May 2008 03:16:18 -0500

Can I just say… eeewwh! So instead of remembering a simple syntax rule, you make all your code look crappy? I’m guessing your indentation is equally ‘creative’... (thank goodness Python saves us from much random code vomit like this!)

Comment on A quick Javascript formatting tip by Piers Cawley

Sun, 11 May 2008 01:24:39 -0500

Well, you can say it, but it does leave the rest of us to wonder what publicly insulting somebody’s taste (and de gustibus non est disputandum and all that) is supposed to contribute to a discussion.

I suppose I should be grateful that you haven’t also inferred from my post that my momma wears army boots. Or maybe you did, but were too polite to mention it.