Hello Norbert,

NH> I'm asking myself if there is any common sense about NH> how to indent the code in smalltalk/squeak.

there also must be some common sense about it but in my case lazyness rules.

I type without thinking about indentation and let the pretty printer take care that every method is formatted the same. (context menu in the code pane, more, pretty print, *after* accepting changes)

Sometimes I don't like the output but I dislike even more to do it manually or to change the pretty printer. What I do manually is insert blank lines between code phrases. This more in Lisp than in Squeak.

I believe that a consistent look is more important than an optimal look.

Cheers,

Herbert mailto:herbertkoenig@gmx.net

Hi Norbert,

Hi,

I'm asking myself if there is any common sense about how to indent the code in smalltalk/squeak.

Most of the time I see something like

statement do: [ :parameter | otherStatement selector: [ mostinnerstatement ] ].

or

statement do: [ :parameter | otherStatement ].

Kent Beck's "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns" has a good section on this. He presents ten simple patterns to drive the formatting of Smalltalk code.

The book is a bit older now - it dates from 1997 - but might not be too hard to find. I think our local library system (here in Columbus, OH) even had a copy.

Beck's Indented Control Flow pattern says,

Put zero or one argument messages on the same lines as their receiver. For messages with two or more keywords put each keyword/argument pair on its own line, indented one tab.

So, you would say

limit := myList size.

or

larger := firstCount max: secondCount.

but

inRange := amount between: low and: high.

He also has patterns that describe how to format conditionals, blocks, etc. The rest of the book is good too - it has advice about other parts of Smalltalk usage.

As others have said, of course the most important thing is to pick a style that works well and use it consistently. I like Beck's style, but as you have seen, there are other good ones in use.

Benjamin Schroeder