[phobos] excessive vertical spacing?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 1/28/13 3:51 PM, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> I hate empty lines after "variable declarations or before or after if
> blocks".
> D isn't Fortran and variables typically get defined right before being used
> and go out of scope as soon as possible.

I agree and was about to submit a similar protest but gave up on that.

> Distinguishing if statements is
> frankly strange in general, as fonts and editors provide enough of control
> to make these stand out.
> Same goes for putting a line before return statement - the return
> keyword is already
> highlighted, and pretty much always expected. Most of the time (YMMV)
> it's either
> an early return as (if+return) or the good old return at the end of
> function.
>
> I'd say saved vertical space adds more clarity especially with modern
> wide-screen laptops ;)
> And quite a lot of it is already wasted since we have "brace on its own
> line" as a style guideline.
>
> I don't mind (and in fact like) empty lines that indicate semantic
> blocks or steps inside of a function.
> I'd even put a comment in such a case. One of examples is the
> exception-safe code as there
> is always a line between the stuff that may fail with exception (action)
> and the stuff that shall never do (commit).

I agree with all of the above. Let me add that the need for vertical 
blank lines may sometimes reveal the opportunity of refactoring into 
smaller functions.


Andrei