Re: Lisp code formatting....

[Barry Margolin <barry.margolin@level3.com>]

In article <b607d812.0303071225.576996cb@posting.google.com>,
Sandip Chitale <sandipchitale@yahoo.com> wrote:
>I was reading through the emacs lisp manual and came across the
>following paragraph:
>
>   * Don't make a habit of putting close-parentheses on lines by
>     themselves; Lisp programmers find this disconcerting.
>
>Why do "Lisp programmers find this disconcerting" ? Do *all* Lisp
>programmers find this disconcerting ? I don't.

The majority of people with several decades of experience.  We learned the
standard programming style from each other, just like other idioms of the
language.

>     Once in a while, when there is a sequence of many consecutive
>     close-parentheses, it may make sense to split the sequence in one
>     or two significant places.
>
>Isn't this arbitrary ? It does not sound like a standard.
>
>Can Emacs lisp gurus shed some light on this ?

Since there are so many parentheses in Lisp code, devoting a line to each
close paren wastes lots of space and clutters up the definition.
Parentheses tend to be viewed as noise, so they shouldn't be emphasized so
much.  While the Lisp implementation cares about them quite a bit,
programmers tend to depend on indentation to see the structure of the code.
And editors like Emacs automate the indentation process.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin@level3.com
Genuity Managed Services, Woburn, MA
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