Yes, I used your information.  Feel free to add more information gleaned from it to the list of facts.

If your numbers weren't accurate, then it would be nice to get an accurate number.  Perhaps Greg Ewing might already have something useful for us to use.  I started to write a script to analyze the standard library and quickly realized I should be using a lexical analyzer to weed out comments and (funny enough) wrapped lines themselves from the analysis.

I took your numbers as a rough fact, using words like "Around", i.e. taking what you said at face value.  I am about to leave on vacation and don't have the time to do the lexical analysis, otherwise I would!  Any excuse to write a useful script ;)

 - Aaron

On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> wrote:
On May 21, 2009, at 14:01, Aaron Rubin <aaron.rubin@4dtechnology.com>
Other new facts:

I think I need to cry foul here!


1) Around 200 lines of code even within the standard library start at the 10th indentation level (40 characters gone already)
2) Around 10 percent of unique variable names even within the standard library have 15 characters or more

These look like the numbers I provided, which I said were crude estimates at best. If someone did a good count, I missed it, and I apologize.  If not, I wouldn't count them as "facts".  Worse, you left off related numbers that bias these: that's 200 lines out of 80000, and about 2 percent of all variable references are to variables longer than 15 characters.  But all of those numbers should be considered tenative estimated, at best.

3) The origin of 80 character limit widths came from punch cards

What did I leave out?

That punch cards were available in sizes between 51 and 96 columns before and after the 80-column card became standard, so this debate is older than most people realize.

Many uses of those cards reserved the last 8 columns for card numbers, so the practical limit was 72 columns, not 80.

Finally, the 80 column card became standard when most printers used fan-fold 132 column paper, so someone felt there was a good reason to limit the input line length even then.

   <mike