Re: The Elements of Informix-4gl Style?

Path: emory!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!yale.edu!yale!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!spdcc!dirtydog.ima.isc.com!ispd-newsserver!kodak!music!amiano From: amiano@music.Kodak.COM (Mitch Amiano) Newsgroups: comp.databases.informix Keywords: 4gl style Message-ID: <1992Mar6.163145.5233@kodak.kodak.com> Date: 6 Mar 92 16:31:45 GMT References: <1992Mar5.021035.18374@StarConn.com> <1992Mar6.032749.6321@nas.nasa.gov> Sender: amiano@music (Mitch Amiano) Organization: Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester, NY In article <1992Mar6.032749.6321@nas.nasa.gov>, jcarter@sun204.nas.nasa.gov (John R. Carter Sr.) writes: |> In article <1992Mar5.021035.18374@StarConn.com> pmahler@StarConn.com (Paul Mahler) |> dumped on us: |> > So what do you folks think? What makes for an attractive, |> > legible, practical 4gl style? |> |> And I respond: |> Why the BIG BOLD LETTERS, of course. That way I can find the |> keywords faster. I also prefer the formatting the way Snyder did it. Personally, I dislike using all capitals for keywords. But as long as the team feels differently, I will continue using them. Our team has adopted the convention of UsingCapsToSeparateInstead_of_underscores. This is harder to implement, since you have to build a habit of writing code that way. Also - if the database columns are not named by that convention, it makes it harder to go by. For my own projects, I have used a convention of capitalizing the first letter of each keyword, instead of the whole word, and use a 3 space indentation instead of tabs. Some terminals and printers do not expand tabs to an equivalent number of spaces, and the format quickly becomes screwed up when relying on tabs for indents. I am trying to build a habit of not using tabs _at all_. Also - our i4GL cannot correctly interpret tabs in Display, Message, and Error statements, so we can't use them there anyway. I seem to recall a comercially offered utility package which beautifies 4GL code - including indents and capitalization. You could alter indents and capitalisations to your hearts desire, and it _worked_. But I don't have the disk with me and can't recall the name :-( ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Mitch Amiano Current Work Phone: 716-477-3506 | | Software Contractor Address: amiano@music.kodak.com | | Rochester, NY | | 716-226-2024 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------