Re: Source code formatting: line length limit?

["Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/emacs@rum.cs.yale.edu>]

> I think both of you implicitly imply that text *over* 80 columns is
> bad and should be avoided.
> 
> Could you make this explicit?

Yes, I think one or two lines slightly over 80 chars are OK as long as
there's a good justification for them and as long as they're not all
next to each other.

> To illustrate my problem:  I have just reformatted source code from
> something like 120 columns to something below 80.  Should I revert
> this change, making the lines longer again?  Some of the changes
> produced rather awful-looking code because the code is nested very
> deeply.

If it's nested too deeply, it's sometimes difficult to place
LF such that the indentation looks good and the code readable,
but most of the time, it's just difficult to read no matter what
and should thus be split out into a separate function.

120 is way over what I consider as acceptable: it's basically unreadable.


	Stefan