Posts

Showing posts from February, 2008

Portrait of a N00b

  The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath. — Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart This is how I used to comment my code, twenty years ago ( Note: dramatization ): /** * By the time we get to this point in the function, * our structure is set up properly and we've created * a buffer large enough to handle the input plus some * overflow space. I'm not sure if the overflow space * is strictly necessary, but it can't hurt. Next we * have to update the counter to account for the fact * that the caller has read a value without consuming * it. I considered putting the counter-increment on * the shoulders of the caller, but since it meant every * caller had to do it, I figured it made more sense to * just move it here. We can revisit the decision down * the road if we find some callers that need the option * of incrementing it themselves. */ counter++; // increment the consumed-value counte