Editing Indentation style (section)

=== Allman ===
{{anchor|Allman|Allman style|BSD/Allman style}}

The Allman style is named after [[Eric Allman]]. It is also sometimes termed ''BSD style'' since Allman wrote many of the utilities for [[Berkeley Software Distribution|BSD]] Unix (although this should not be confused with the different "BSD KNF style"; see above).

This style puts the brace associated with a control statement on the next line, indented to the same level as the control statement. Statements within the braces are indented to the next level.<ref name="jargon"/>

<syntaxhighlight lang=c>
while (x == y)
{
    something();
    something_else();
}

final_thing();
</syntaxhighlight>

This style is similar to the standard indentation used by the [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]] languages and [[Transact-SQL]], where the braces are equivalent to the keywords <code>begin</code> and <code>end</code>.

<syntaxhighlight lang=pascal>
(* Example Allman code indentation style in Pascal *)
procedure dosomething(x, y: Integer);
begin
    while x = y do
    begin
        something();
        something_else();
    end;
end;
</syntaxhighlight>

Consequences of this style are that the indented code is clearly set apart from the containing statement by lines that are almost all [[Whitespace character|whitespace]] and the closing brace lines up in the same column as the opening brace. Some people feel this makes it easy to find matching braces. The blocking style also delineates the block of code from the associated control statement. Commenting out or removing a control statement or block of code, or [[code refactoring]], are all less likely to introduce syntax errors via dangling or missing braces. Also, it is consistent with brace placement for the outer-function block.

For example, the following is still correct syntactically:

<syntaxhighlight lang=c>
// while (x == y)
{
    something();
    something_else();
}
</syntaxhighlight>
As is this:
<syntaxhighlight lang=c>
// for (int i=0; i < x; i++)
// while (x == y)
if (x == y)
{
    something();
    something_else();
}
</syntaxhighlight>

Even like this, with conditional compilation:

<syntaxhighlight lang=c>
    int c;
#ifdef HAS_GETCH
    while ((c = getch()) != EOF)
#else
    while ((c = getchar()) != EOF)
#endif
    {
        do_something(c);
    }
</syntaxhighlight>

==== Variant: Allman-8 ====
Allman-8 uses the 8-space indentation tabs and 80-column limit of the Linux Kernel variant of K&R. The style purportedly helps improve readability on projectors. Also, the indentation size and column restriction help create a visual cue for identifying excessive nesting of code blocks. These advantages combine to help provide newer developers and learners implicit guidance to manage code complexity.{{Citation needed|date=October 2016}}