[Rosettacode] D code line length limit

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Thu, 08 May 2014 07:29:08 +0000
bearophile via Digitalmars-d-learn <digitalmars-d-learn at puremagic.com>
wrote:

> Jonathan M Davis:
>
> > ultimately, this sort of
> > thing pretty much always ends up being highly subjective.
>
> But please put the const/immutable of methods on the right:
>
> struct Foo {
>      void bar1() const {} // Good
>      const void bar2() {} // Bad
> }

Well, that's one case where there's actually an objective reason to put it on
the right due to one of the flaws in the language - that it's the one place
that const inconsistently does not apply to the type immediately to its right
(though it's consistent with how attributes are applied to the function itself
- just not consistent with variables).

It's also because of this that I favor putting most attributes on the right
(though that's subjective, unlike with const). I only put attributes on the
left if they're on the left in C++ or Java (e.g. static, public, or final).
Everything else goes on the right.

Unfortunately, making this consistent by doing something like enforcing that
all function attributes go on the right would then be inconsistent with other
languages with regards to the attributes that they have which go on the left,
so I don't know how we could have gotten it completely right. No matter which
way you go, it's inconsistent in one way or another. If it were up to me, I'd
probably enforce that all attributes which could be ambiguous go on the right
but that all others could go on either side, but Walter has never liked that
idea. So, we're stuck with arguing that everyone should put them on the right
by convention in order to avoid the ambiguity.

- Jonathan M Davis