79 chars or more?

[AK]

On 08/17/2010 10:28 AM, Stefan Schwarzer wrote:
> Hi Neil,
>
> On 2010-08-17 14:42, Neil Cerutti wrote:
>> On 2010-08-17, Michael Torrie<torriem at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> In general if I find myself consistently going longer than 75
>>> or 80 characters, I need to refactor my code to make it more
>>> manageable.  If I have to scroll up five pages to find the
>>> beginning of a block, that normally means my code could be
>>> simplified and improved.
>>
>> Looking through my code, the split-up lines almost always include
>> string literals or elimination of meaningless temporary
>> variables, e.g.:
>>
>>          self.expiration_date = translate_date(find(response,
>>              'MPNExpirationDate').text, '%Y-%m-%d', '%m%d%Y')
>
> I'd probably reformat this to
>
>            self.expiration_date = translate_date(
>              find(response, 'MPNExpirationDate').text,
>              '%Y-%m-%d', '%m%d%Y')
>
> or even
>
>            self.expiration_date = translate_date(
>              find(response, 'MPNExpirationDate').text,
>              '%Y-%m-%d',
>              '%m%d%Y')
>
> for consistency.
>
> This not only limits the width but also makes the nesting of
> the calls more visible.
>
> Stefan

Doesn't this create the problem of functions growing too long to fit in
a screen? I think it's very useful to try to keep function size low
enough so that you can view the whole function without having to scroll
up and down. (even though that's not always possible) -ak