Number of characters recommended for a statement
- by liaK
Hi,
I have been using Qt 4.5 and so do C++.
I have been told that it's a standard practice to maintain the length of each statement in the application to 80 characters. Even in Qt creator we can make a right border visible so that we can know whether we are crossing the 80 characters limit.
But my question is, Is it really a standard being followed? Because in my application, I use indenting and all, so it's quite common that I cross the boundary. Other cases include, there might be a error statement which will be a bit explanatory one and which is in an inner block of code, so it too will cross the boundary. Usually my variable names look bit lengthier so as to make the names meaningful. When I call the functions of the variable names, again I will cross. Function names will not be in fewer characters either.
I agree a horizontal scroll bar shows up and it's quite annoying to move back and forth. So, for function calls including multiple arguments, when the boundary is reached I will make the forth coming arguments in the new line.
But besides that, for a single statement (for e.g a very long error message which is in double quotes " " or like longfun1()->longfun2()->...) if I use an \ and split into multiple lines, the readability becomes very poor.
So is it a good practice to have those statement length restrictions? If this restriction in statement has to be followed?
I don't think it depends on a specific language anyway. I added C++ and Qt tags since if it might. Any pointers regarding this are welcome.
