[Bioperl-l] added a perltidy profile file

[Dan Bolser]

2009/8/24 Heikki Lehvaslaiho <heikki.lehvaslaiho at gmail.com>:
> De facto coding style standard for BioPerl has been emacs using cperl
> mode and bioperl.list file. As long as this configuration does not
> change the conventions used, I see this as great way in helping to
> format code from other editors.

'bioperl.list' file? I guess you made a typo and you mean bioperl.lisp

http://www.bioperl.org/wiki/Emacs_template



> 2009/8/23 Hilmar Lapp <hlapp at gmx.net>:
>> Consistent coding style is in principle a good thing.
>>
>> It's also worth to keep in mind one of the old BioPerl principles - don't
>> change working code purely to change style. In my interpretation of the
>> rule, however, this has always applied to code writing style, and not code
>> formatting style. I'm assuming the goal here is only to make the formatting
>> consistent.

I have changed coding style in the past.  IIRC this was in the
Quality.pm file. I made the changes because two different styles were
being used to do (roughly) the same thing at different points in the
script. The two styles were being used interchangeably (at random?).
As a noob, the use of two different styles was very confusing, because
I didn't know if the difference was significant or what the
significance of the difference might be. I resolved the issue by
writing a set of additional tests and then slowly harmonizing the
coding style while confirming that the tests were still running OK.

In this case I think it was reasonable to try to have a consistent
style at least within the module. Or should I have left the style as
it was?

Cheers,
Dan.