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From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: <seberino@spawar.navy.mil>, <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
Subject: RE: best to have max width of 79 or 80 in source code?
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:25:40 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <001001c95329$d084d2e0$0200a8c0@us.oracle.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <30ea20ec-ffcb-4ea1-a7d8-14e1caed696f@r36g2000prf.googlegroups.com>

> Many try to keep their source code to a max width of around 80.
> Someone recommended 79 for some reason but I can't remember why.
> Is it because you need to allow another column for newline?

79 is a prime choice. ;-)

Punched ("IBM") cards had 80 columns (actually, the original Hollerith cards had
45 columns - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_cards).

From that, 80 became typical for max line length in code. In some languages,
such as Fortan, it was (still is?) a hard line limit (but statements could be
continued across multiple lines).

Newline at line end does not count as a column, BTW.





  reply	other threads:[~2008-11-30 20:25 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2008-11-30 19:10 best to have max width of 79 or 80 in source code? seberino
2008-11-30 20:25 ` Drew Adams [this message]
2008-11-30 20:50 ` Xah Lee
2008-12-01  1:45   ` seberino
2008-12-01  2:54     ` Xah Lee

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