Open Mike: Brackets – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

Allman or K&R? This is Open Mike, a series of discussion posts to throw the cat amongst the pigeons. These posts are all about you — we want to hear your opinions, ideas, and thoughts. To kick things off, let’s talk about brackets.

1: Do you Cuddle?

“Cuddling” braces means writing them like this:

function showCuddlingExample():void {
	if (example) {
		//do something
	} else {
		//do something else
	}
}

Alternatively, there’s Allman style:

function showAllmanExample():void
{
	if (example)
	{
		//do something
	}
	else
	{
		//do something else
	}
}

This Wikipedia entry lists other common styles. Which do you use?

I like Allman because you can do this:

//if (someCondition)
{
	doSomething();
}

I can easily turn the conditional check off by simply commenting out the ‘if’ statement. If I was cuddling braces, I’d have to either write a new brace to replace the ‘if’, or comment out the corresponding closing brace.

2: Do You Pad Your Parentheses?

Compare all of these:

//tight
function exampleFunction(arg1:int, arg2:String):void

//space before parentheses
function exampleFunction (arg1:int, arg2:String):void

//space between variable and type
function exampleFunction(arg1 : int, arg2 : String) : void

//padded parentheses
function exampleFunction( arg1:int, arg2:String ):void

I’ve seen all of these, in various combinations. I used to use ‘padded parentheses’, as it seemed easier to see the arguments and their types, but now I prefer ‘tight’. What about you?