Question

Often the number of arguments passed to a function can be large. Consider the following case:

calculate(dataManager.getLastUpdate().getNumberOfChildren(),
          dataManager.getLastUpdate().getNumberOfParents(),
          dataManager.getLastUpdate().getNumberOfGrandChildren(),
          long milliseconds,
          int somethingelse)

Is there a guideline in Java that offers a way to align the arguments? Fitting all arguments in a line would not look pretty.

Answer 1

According to Sun’s Java coding conventions, section "Wrapping Lines":

When an expression will not fit on a single line, break it according to these general principles:

• Break after a comma.
• Break before an operator.
• Prefer higher-level breaks to lower-level breaks.
• Align the new line with the beginning of the expression at the same level on the previous line.
• If the above rules lead to confusing code or to code that’s squished up against the right margin, just indent 8 spaces instead.

The document also includes some examples for method calls:

function(longExpression1, longExpression2, longExpression3,
         longExpression4, longExpression5);

var = function1(longExpression1,
                function2(longExpression2,
                          longExpression3));