There is no One True Brace Style

[Jaykul]

There are many brace and indent styles in programming, but in the PowerShell community, there are essentially three:

• BSD/Allman style
• K&R/OTBS
• Stroustroup

I've briefly given an example and explained the rationale for each below
Feel free to comment, but please vote for your favorite by using the 👍
And of course, if there's one you can't stand, feel free to give it a 👎

[Jaykul]

Allman style

The Allman style is named after Eric Allman, who wrote many of the BSD utilities. It puts braces on their own lines, indented to the same level as the control statement, and indents statements within the braces.

This style is the Visual Studio default indenting style for C# and is the standard for dotnet, PowerShell, asp.net, and basically, all Microsoft C# projects.

enum Color
{
    Black,
    White
}

function Test-Code
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param
    (
        [int]$ParameterOne
    )
    end
    {
        if(10 -gt $ParameterOne)
        {
            "Greater"
        }
        else
        {
            "Lesser"    
        }
    }
}

In PowerShell, braces sometimes are not for logic or flow-control, but function more like quotes: enclosing a script-block that you assign to a variable or pass as an argument. In those cases, the brace must be on the same line with the variable or command it's being passed to, so it will look wrong among Allman style indenting.

Built-in commands like ForEach-Object and Where-Object use script blocks as arguments, and there are a number of modules which emulate a sort-of DSL (Domain Specific Language) that require it as well, most prominently, Pester, which is shipped in Windows with PowerShell. Since most PowerShell coders who care about style are writing tests using Pester, the Allman style has had a disadvantage -- particularly since at PowerShell's beginning, Allman style didn't work for code you might want to type or paste into a command-line prompt.

[Jaykul]

K&R (One True Brace Style variant)

K&R is named for Kernighan and Ritchie, who used it in their book The C Programming Language. According to Wikipedia it originated in Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style and Software Tools. It puts braces on the same line as control statements.

The One True Brace Style is the K&R style with every braceable statement always having the brace on the end of the line. The original K&R puts braces for functions on a new line, and gave you the option to leave off braces for one-line statement blocks (which you cannot do in PowerShell).

enum Color {
    Black, 
    White
}

function Test-Code {
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [int]$ParameterOne
    )
    end {
        if (10 -gt $ParameterOne) {
            "Greater"
        } else {
            "Lesser"    
        }
    }
}

The primary argument for OTBS is practical: when code is written following this style, new lines of code can be inserted between any two lines with no risk of accidentally breaking the code by separating braces from their statement blocks.

In PowerShell, this style gained many adherents early on, because prior to the arrival of the ISE in PowerShell 3 and later the PSReadLine module, it simply wasn't possible to put most braces on a new line when typing them into the console, and this was the only place you could type that knew anything about the language! The console expected a single line of PowerShell, and would produce errors if, for instance, you didn't put a { at the end of the line after an if(...) block.

[Jaykul]

Stroustrup

Named after Bjarne Stroustrup, who created it while writing his Programming: Principles and Practice using C++ and The C++ Programming Language, this style is a long time favorite of those who learned C++ as their first language. It is essentially a variant on K&R discussed earlier, with some variations: "else" blocks are placed on a new line. Unlike the OTBS variation, it follows K&R's suggestion that although the opening brace for a class and a struct are not on a separate line, for a function it is. It also allows skipping the braces for single line statements, but that's not allowed by PowerShell's parser.

enum Color {
    Black,
    White
}

function Test-Code
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [int]$ParameterOne
    )
    end {
        if(10 -gt $ParameterOne) {
            "Greater"
        }
        else {
            "Lesser"    
        }
    }
}

The changes Stroustrup makes means that this style looses the "insert a line anywhere" feature of OTBS, and looks somewhat like a cross between Allman and OTBS.

[Jaykul]

It appears to me that PowerShell advocates of "Stroustrup style" don't actually care for anything he says except having the else on a new line. Other than that, they want to follow OTBS. If that's true for you... vote here instead of there ;-)

[Jaykul]

P.S. As a side note (and I will brook no discussion on this): spaces won. In this guide, an indentation level is 4 spaces.

For thoroughness, I reviewed C, C++, BSD, Linux kernel, Google's JavaGuide and the dotnet, asp.net, and PowerShell guides -- they all use spaces, except the Linux Kernel. Google's Java guide uses 2 spaces. All of the others use 4 spaces.

The kernel coding style guide, being written by a dictator who still codes in a terminal, not only requires tabs, it specifies tabs as 8 characters, limits line length to 80 characters, and considers anything over 3 levels of indent to be a design flaw. It also refers to K&R as prophets, and to those who disagree with K&R as heretics, and considers the violation of naming conventions a "shooting offense" ...

[Jaykul]

P.P.S. The Linux Kernel advocates for the pure K&R indentation style, with neither the OTBS variation forced upon PowerShell in the early days, nor Stroustrup's lonely else, in defense of this difference between function braces and everything else, they write:

Unlike the indent size, there are few technical reasons to choose one
[brace] placement strategy over the other, but the preferred way, as
shown to us by the prophets Kernighan and Ritchie, is to put the opening
brace last on the line, and put the closing brace first ...

Heretic people all over the world have claimed that this inconsistency
is ... well ... inconsistent, but all right-thinking people know that
(a) K&R are right and (b) K&R are right. Besides, functions are
special anyway (you can't nest them in C).

This was the best defense I found for that oddity of K&R's bracing style.

Obviously in the C# and PowerShell world, K&R are not considered "prophets" and the Allman style prevails -- but additionally, it's worth pointing out that functions are not special in PowerShell: they can be nested.

This may be sufficient reason for the PowerShell variant of Stroustrup's variant to choose to treat the braces for functions the same as other braces (putting them at the end of the line), but when combined with the prohibition on leaving braces off, it certainly argues that this PowerShell-Stroustrup style is no longer the C++ standard style, but something invented by PowerShell programmers....

[sergeytunnik]

Even though I had no idea what is OTBS I mostly use it in my code. I prefer it cause it is neat. Since most PowerShell function are really simple and short, scrolling tons of braces doesn't seem convenient.

[lwsrbrts]

I use OTBS with Stroustrup else. I believe i started my programming/scripting foray with PHP so it may have started there but I carried it in to VBscript and Powershell. Allman style is a waste of space, literally rather than figuratively, and OTBS with else on the same line is just unnecessarily confusing compared to the rest of the script. That's my two pence...🇬🇧

[TimCurwick]

I use Allman style when writing code for clients and sometimes for colleagues. I use a variant on Allman when I don't care about anyone else.

[rismoney]

P.S. As a side note (and I will brook no discussion on this): spaces won. In this guide, an indentation level is 4 spaces.

4 spaces is 2 too many.