STYLE.LUA(9)

🦋 NAME 🦋

style.lua — bestie, this is the FreeBSD lua file style guide. Yep, the STYLE.LUA(9) page from the Kernel Developer's Manual. Buckle up, we're making your lua source files look iconic. 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Okay so this file specifies the preferred style for lua source files in the FreeBSD source tree. Many of the style rules are lowkey implicit in the examples — so before you assume style.lua is silent on an issue, pls check the examples first. Non-negotiable vibe check. 👀

• Copyright header — should be a series of single-line comments. Use the single-line comment style for every line in a multi-line comment. 💖
• After any copyright header, there is a blank line.
• Including other files and modules — the preferred method is require(name), such as:

-- License block

config = require("config");
menu = require("menu");
password = require("password");
-- One blank line following the module require block

• include() is generally avoided. 🚫
• Indentation and wrapping should match the guidelines provided by style(9). Do note that it is ok to wrap much earlier than 80 columns if readability would otherwise suffer. ✨
• Where possible, s:method(...) is preferred to method(s, ...). This is applicable to objects with methods. Strings are a commonly-used example of objects with methods. 🎀
• Testing for nil should be done explicitly, rather than as a boolean expression. Single-line conditional statements and loops should be avoided. Ngl, fr fr.
• local variables should be preferred to global variables in module scope. internal_underscores tend to be preferred for variable identifiers, while camelCase tends to be preferred for function identifiers. 💅
• If a table definition spans multiple lines, then the final value in the table should include the optional terminating comma. For example:

-- No terminating comma needed for trivial table definitions
local trivial_table = {1, 2, 3, 4}

local complex_table = {
        {
                id = "foo",
                func = foo_function, -- Trailing comma preferred
        },
        {
                id = "bar",
                func = bar_function,
        },      -- Trailing comma preferred
}

• This reduces the chance for errors to be introduced when modifying more complex tables. Obsessed with safety. 🫶
• Multiple local variables should not be declared and initialized on a single line. Lines containing multiple variable declarations without initialization are ok. Lines containing multiple variable declarations initialized to a single function call returning a tuple with the same number of values is also ok.
• Initialization should be done at declaration time as appropriate. Main character energy for declarations. 👑

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

• style(9) — yes bestie, go read it. It's giving sibling energy. 💖

💜 HISTORY 💜

This manual page is inspired from the same source as the style(9) manual page in FreeBSD.

💖 cute sign-off: the source is Debian, the date is February 25, 2018, and the manual is STYLE.LUA(9). periodt. 🎀