Re: New-line fight: Comment -vs- the end of source file
Kaba wrote:
(I'm not familiar enough with Visual Studios to know how to
configure its editor, but it would seem very strange that it
cannot automatically generate boiler plate, nor
automatically ensure that the file ends with a new line.
I've never actually seen an editor which doesn't have the
latter possibility.)
Maybe strange, but that's the way it is:)
The fact that it cannot automatically generate boiler plate
pretty much makes it unusable for production code, no? You
certainly don't want to count on developers typing in the
copyright by hand each time, nor the SCCS (or whatever you're
using) control strings.
I'll admit that from what little I've seen of the Visual
Studio's interface, I'd categorize it as a toy. BUT... I'm not
at all familiar with it. Apparently, people are using it in
real developments, so I presume that it has possibilities I
don't know about. And to tell the truth, I was pretty sure that
automatic generation of boiler-plate text was one of them, since
I've never heard of a project where this wasn't required. And
the system is known for its "Wizards", which automatically
generate things (or at least, that's what I think I've heard.)
I've also read or heard somewhere that source code control
systems can be integrated---maybe that's how they do it: by
asking the source code control system for the file, and having
it generate the boiler plate.
Anyway, my answer to your problem would be to change editors. Or
learn how to do such fundamental things with the editor you've
got.
In effect, pretend that the newline was there before the
end-of-file marker.
And what happens if the last character in the file is a '\'?
Or if the system isn't capable of returning data from a text
file if the data doesn't end with a '\n'? (I suppose that
for the first, you could say that the compiler should
process all files as if they had two additional trailing new
lines, and I doubt that the second is really relevant
today.)
Happens the same as if there were a newline in the first
place. That rule should answer any such problem.
Undefined behaviour, then?
The current rule is that unless a file ends with an unescaped
new line, it is undefined behavior. You are proposing to change
that, so what is the new rule? (One possiblity would be that
when reading a file, the compiler automatically appends two
newline characters to the end of it, no matter what.)
Anyway, if you think it important, write up a proposal. I don't
think that the "impossible on some systems" argument really
holds much weight today, and changing undefined behavior into
defined behavior should break much working code.
--
James Kanze GABI Software
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