The Robert C. Martin Clean Code Collection (Collection) (Robert C. Martin Series)

by Robert C. Martin

Another use for white space is to accentuate the precedence of operators. public class Quadratic { public static double root1(double a, double b, double c) { double determinant = determinant(a, b, c); return (-b + Math.sqrt(determinant)) / (2*a); } public static double root2(int a, int b, int c) { double determinant = determinant(a, b, c); return (-b - Math.sqrt(determinant)) / (2*a); } private static double determinant(double a, double b, double c) { return b*b - 4*a*c; } } Notice how nicely the equations read. The factors have no white space between them because they are high precedence. The terms are separated by white space because addition and subtraction are lower precedence. Unfortunately, most tools for reformatting code are blind to the precedence of operators and impose the same spacing throughout. So subtle spacings like those shown above tend to get lost after you reformat the code.