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 Posted by Jochem Maas on 02/09/05 12:10 
Richard Lynch wrote: 
> Jochem Maas wrote: 
>  
>>Dan Trainor wrote: 
>> 
>>>Hello, all - 
>>> 
>>>Being still fairly new to PHP, I thought I'd ask a few more questions 
>>>and get on to the right track here, developing correct coding habits 
>>>before I start to teah myself incorrect habits. 
 
..... 
 
>>7. let others review your code if you can (that's not an invite to post 
>>your complete codebase to the list ;-). 
>  
>  
> Hmmmmm.  It *MIGHT* be an interesting forum somewhere/somehow to have a 
> "Code Review" site/forum/list for the express purpose of people posting 
> code, and tons of it, for critique... 
>  
 
I think such a place would be cool but If you let everyone upload their 
code then everyone would be sitting around waiting for their own code to 
be reviewed - I think that the reviews should be by invitation 
('hey Richard fancy showing the world your new XXX?'), 
1 codebase to be reviewed at a time, with a lead reviewer who acts as moderator. 
 
for those of you from the UK... kind of like Blue Peter meets PHP. 
 
> I cannot count the number of times I've seen code like this: 
>  
> /** foo (void) : function foo 
>  *  Does foo and returns the result 
> **/ 
> function foo(){ 
>   /* Insert spaghetti code here */ 
> } 
>  
> Hello?!  What *GOOD* does that "documentation" do? 
>  
> What always seems to be missing, to me, is the nuts and bolts of how to 
> write GOOD documentation. 
 
I actually meant that you should add comments into the meat of the code. yes, 
start of each function with a description. BUT ALSO explain every friggin' loop 
so to speak... not just what it does, but how it does it and possibly why. 
 
Richard is correct, I think, in saying that adding fancy Doc cruft to make your 
code look 'professional'... nothing wrong with fancy documentation/comments - just 
make sure you fill them with something. with the hope of not getting laughed at here 
is a function I use quite often to save myself from constant isset() checks on 
request vars. 
 
okay so its 'fancy' documentation, but it really explains what it does - and 
yes it takes 5-6 times as much text to explain what it does than it does to write 
t. 
 
 
/** 
  * getGP() 
  * 
  * this function will return the value of a GET or POST var that corresponds to the 
  * variable name pasted, if nothing is found NULL is returned. contents of POST array 
  * takes precendence over the contents of the GET array. You can specify a value as second argument 
  * which will be returned if the GP var *does not* exist; a third parameter can be given to 
  * which will act as the return value if the GP *does* exist - the limitation is that the parameter cannot be 
  * used to return a literal NULL; but I suggest that this would probably be a silly thing to do in practice 
  * 
  * @var string $v // the name of GP variable whose value to return 
  * @var mixed  $r // value to return if the GP variable was not set 
  * @var mixed  $t // value to return if the GP variable was set (i.e. override the value from GP) 
  * 
  * @return mixed 
  */ 
function getGP($v = '', $r = null, $t = null) 
{ 
     if (!empty($v)) { 
         if (isset($_GET[$v]))  { $r = (!is_null($t)) ? $t: $_GET[$v]; } 
         if (isset($_POST[$v])) { $r = (!is_null($t)) ? $t: $_POST[$v];} 
     } 
     return $r; 
} 
 
 
 
 
>  
> Anybody got a good reference to something like Documentation Rules such as: 
>  
> Any jargon or technical term being discussed cannot be used as the 
> description of the term.  IE, no self-referential definitions. 
> (see example above) 
>  
> I'd really like to be able to recommend a reference of this nature to 
> Beginners. 
>
 
  
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