Question

I’ve seen this format used for comma-delimited lists in some C++ code (although this could apply to any language):

void function(  int a               , int b               , int c              ) 

I was wondering why would someone use that over a more common format such as:

void function (int a,                int b,                int c               ) 

Answer 1

That’s a pretty common coding style when writing SQL statements:

SELECT field1      , field2      , field3 --   , field4      , field5 FROM tablename 

Advantages:

• Lets you add, remove, or rearrange fields easily without having to worry about that final trailing comma.
• Lets you easily comment out a row (TSQL uses ‘–‘) without messing up the rest of the statement.

I wouldn’t think you’d want to rearrange parameter order in a function as frequent as you do in SQL, so maybe its just somebody’s habit.

The ability to comment one of them out will depend on the specific language being used. Not sure about C++. I know that VB.Net wouldn’t allow it, but that’s because it requires a continuation character ( _ ) to split statements across lines.