<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Formatting</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.79"><LINK REV="MADE" HREF="mailto:pgsql-docs@postgresql.org"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PostgreSQL 8.3.6 Documentation" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="PostgreSQL Coding Conventions" HREF="source.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="PostgreSQL Coding Conventions" HREF="source.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Reporting Errors Within the Server" HREF="error-message-reporting.html"><LINK REL="STYLESHEET" TYPE="text/css" HREF="stylesheet.css"><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"><META NAME="creation" CONTENT="2009-02-03T04:34:16"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="5" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >PostgreSQL 8.3.6 Documentation</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="source.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="source.html" >Fast Backward</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="60%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 46. PostgreSQL Coding Conventions</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="source.html" >Fast Forward</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="error-message-reporting.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="SOURCE-FORMAT" >46.1. Formatting</A ></H1 ><P > Source code formatting uses 4 column tab spacing, with tabs preserved (i.e. tabs are not expanded to spaces). Each logical indentation level is one additional tab stop. Layout rules (brace positioning, etc) follow BSD conventions. </P ><P > While submitted patches do not absolutely have to follow these formatting rules, it's a good idea to do so. Your code will get run through <SPAN CLASS="APPLICATION" >pgindent</SPAN >, so there's no point in making it look nice under some other set of formatting conventions. </P ><P > The <TT CLASS="FILENAME" >src/tools</TT > directory contains sample settings files that can be used with the <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >emacs</SPAN >, <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >xemacs</SPAN > or <SPAN CLASS="PRODUCTNAME" >vim</SPAN > editors to help ensure that they format code according to these conventions. </P ><P > The text browsing tools <SPAN CLASS="APPLICATION" >more</SPAN > and <SPAN CLASS="APPLICATION" >less</SPAN > can be invoked as: </P><PRE CLASS="PROGRAMLISTING" >more -x4 less -x4</PRE ><P> to make them show tabs appropriately. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="source.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="error-message-reporting.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >PostgreSQL Coding Conventions</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="source.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Reporting Errors Within the Server</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >