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Code lines number influenced by formatting style.

gasto · 2014-03-06T02:43:57

The imprecision of a line count is highly influenced by code formatting style: int function(int a, int b, int c) { // Burn the Parthenon here. int culprit; } for(unsigned i=0; i<n; i++) { // Clean your room here. } As opposed to: int function(int a, int b, int c){ int culprit; // Burn the Parthenon here.} for(unsigned i=0; i<n; i++){ // Clean your room here.} How do developers deal with this issue? It can be the difference between 120,000 lines of code and 40,000 lines of code. I guess that if you want to trick your boss, then the former is recommended.

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by gasto March 02, 2014 09:25 PM

22 comments, last by Bacterius 10 years, 1 month ago

Bacterius

13,181

March 05, 2014 09:01 PM

replace arrays with variables having actual numbers in their names

Array length known only at runtime? Only one reasonable solution - self-modifying code, and invoking undefined behaviour by assuming the variables are placed contiguously on the stack. Actually, scratch that - lookup is achieved by a sufficiently large switch.. no, that's too readable.. a long list of if/else conditions.. no.. you know what, let's just precompute the program's output for every possible input and just hardcode that. It was throwaway code anyway.

“If I understand the standard right it is legal and safe to do this but the resulting value could be anything.”

King Mir

2,506

March 05, 2014 10:18 PM

LOC isn't a totally useless metric. It can be used a a proxy for how long it would take to find a bug, and the over all complexity of a project. It's just important to remember that it's not an accurate measure. But sometimes, that's ok.