Re: The Elements of Informix-4gl Style?

Path: emory!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ddssuprs!lpc From: lpc@dickens.com (Luis P Caamano) Newsgroups: comp.databases.informix Keywords: 4gl style Message-ID: <1992Mar09.021316.10584@dickens.com> Date: 9 Mar 92 02:13:16 GMT References: <1992Mar5.021035.18374@StarConn.com> <29B7A050.1042@tct.com> Organization: Dickens Data Systems, Inc. In article <29B7A050.1042@tct.com> jim@tct.com (Jim Kunzman) writes: >According to pmahler@StarConn.com (Paul Mahler): >> >> >>Looking at most informix programs makes me want to puke. They >>all look like they were written at terminals with organ pedals >>instead of a shift key. Of course, this is only a small part of the >>problem. >> >>Most C programs I have seen don't have this problem. If they >>were written by generally competent programmers they are >>generally well structured, well styled and easy to read. >> >>Most 4gl programs look like they were written by stupid BASIC >>programmers. This seems to be an artifact of the very first >>examples that came out of Informix where all the key words >>were in upper case and lots of extra blank lines were inserted. >> > >I have to agree with Paul. Proper use of lower case and/or mixed case >makes code much easier to read. Early programs used upper case >exclusively because of teletype limitations and terminal limitations. >However, no magazine or newspaper would ever conceive of abusing >readers by overusing upper case. Neither should programming languages >or programmers. Uppercasing KEYWORDS is particularly annoying and >causes me to pause and wonder why anyone would want to bother >highlighting them. It decreases input speed for both the programmer ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I don't agree. >and the reader. -Jim I have to say that after you've written several apps in 4GL, you don't need to read the keywords. Hence, uppercasing KEYWORDS makes it easier to read 4GL code. Why? you'll read subsconciously the keywords and use some cpu cycles (or brain cycles :-) to read only the variables and table names. For example: select fielda, fieldb, fieldc, fieldd from tablea, tableb, tablec, outer tabled where tablea.p_fieldx = vary.p_filedz andtablea.p_fieldy = vary.p_fieldy and tablea.fieldz = varz.valuex order by fieldb, fieldc versus select fielda, fieldb, fieldc, fieldd from tablea, tableb, tablec, outer tabled where tablea.p_fieldx = vary.p_filedz and tablea.p_fieldy = vary.p_fieldy and tablea.fieldz = varz.valuex order by fieldb, fieldc versus SELECT fielda, fieldb, fieldc, fieldd FROM Tablea, Tableb, Tablec, OUTER Tabled WHERE Tablea.p_fieldx = vary.p_filedz AND Tablea.p_fieldy = vary.p_fieldy AND Tablea.fieldz = varz.valuex ORDER BY fieldb, fieldc Obviously proper indentation helps, but look how easy one can spot the OUTER keyword on the mixed version. If you write all your code following this, soon you won't read the SELECT part nor the FROM, WHERE, ORDER BY, etc I could give more examples involving CASE statements, IFs, WHILEs, long variable names, etc., but I think you got the idea. I definitely prefer to uppercase the KEYWORDS and to use standard indentation. After reading previous postings, it feels good to know that there are other 4GL programmers that think like me. However, this casing issue went to hell when I started using Fourgen tools back in 1988 since their code is only lowercase. At first I wrote a beautifier to uppercase the keywords but I never finished it (I couldn't justify the time on the tool, I needed to use that time writing the application instead). I was glad to see that Snyder had such a tool. It wasn't that bad to get used to all lowercase because the code is standard (I mean generated, kind of the same thing in the same place) and after a while I didn't care about uppercase or lowercase. So, after all, if somebody ask me (like paul did) I'd say that I prefer to uppercase the keywords, but at the end I don't care as long as the code is at least properly indented. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luis P. Caamano | lpc@dickens.com Dickens Data Systems, Inc. | uunet!ddssuprs!lpc Norcross, GA | (404) 242-5991 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you think you know it all, you'll stop learning. -myself The more I learn, the more I know I know nothing. -somebody else