Re: [HACKERS] removal of braces

> 
> Bruce Momjian chortles ominiously:
> > I have written a script to remove braces around single statements, if
> > the statement is only one line in length.
> > 
> > The macro fixup context diff was 1,200 lines, and this diff is 12k
> > lines.
> > 
> > Hope no one is sitting on patches.
> 
> Is this trip necessary? While I am a strong believer in aesthetics when
> it comes to code (make it pretty first, making pretty code work is easy),
> I am not sure I support wholesale changes (12,000 lines of diff) for
> the sake of purely cosmetic issues.
> 
> It is somewhat costly to the developers as we will all have to pull a complete
> new source tree from CVS.

Yes, it is a tradeoff in making so much of a change, but I reviewed the
code, and patch file, and it looked good.  I thought it was broken
because I could not recompile after it, but then realized the macros
were broken.

> It is also somewhat risky. Suppose the script makes an error some
> where due to a tricky macro or suchlike. If this is not in something that
> gets checked by the regression test how likely are we to find it?

If it is broken, we back out the changes.

> 
> And, for those of us contemplating larger projects where we might change a
> large number of files over a period of weeks or months, it presents a
> really scary merge problem.

The code was very conservative:

	awk '	{	line3 = $0;  /* remove un-needed braces around single statements */
			if (skips > 0)
				skips--;
			if (line1 ~ "		*{$" &&
			    line2 ~ "		*[^;{}]*;$" &&
			    line3 ~ "		*}$")
			{
				print line2;
				line1 = "";
				line2 = "";
				line3 = "";
				skips = 3;
			}
			else
	 			if (skips == 0 && NR >= 3)
					print line1;
			line1 = line2;
			line2 = line3;
			line3 = "";
		}
		END {
			if (skips <= 1)
				print line1;
			if (skips <= 2)
				print line2;
	}'


> 
> That said, if you get my patch in before you whack the braces, I don't have
> anything right now that would be harmed.


-- 
Bruce Momjian                          |  830 Blythe Avenue
maillist@candle.pha.pa.us              |  Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  (610) 353-9879(w)
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  (610) 853-3000(h)