guideline

Use consistent spacing around delimiters.

Use the same spacing as you would in regular prose.

Specifically, leave at least one blank space in the following places, as shown in the examples throughout this book. More spaces may be required for the vertical alignment recommended in subsequent guidelines.

- Before and after the following delimiters and binary operators:

When superfluous parentheses are omitted because of operator precedence rules, spaces may optionally be removed around the highest precedence operators in that expression.

example

Default_String : constant String :=
      "This is the long string returned by" &
      " default. It is broken into multiple" &
      " Ada source lines for convenience.";
type Signed_Whole_16 is range -2**15 .. 2**15 - 1;
type Address_Area  is array (Natural range <>) of Signed_Whole_16;

Register : Address_Area (16#7FF0# .. 16#7FFF#);
Memory   : Address_Area (       0 .. 16#7FEC#);

Register(Pc) := Register(A);

X := Signed_Whole_16(Radius * Sin(Angle));

Register(Index) := Memory(Base_Address + Index * Element_Length);

Get(Value => Sensor);

Error_Term := 1.0 - (Cos(Theta)**2 + Sin(Theta)**2);

Z      := X**3;
Y      := C * X + B;
Volume := Length * Width * Height;

rationale

It is a good idea to use white space around delimiters and operators because they are typically short sequences (one or two characters) that can easily get lost among the longer keywords and identifiers. Putting white space around them makes them stand out. Consistency in spacing also helps make the source code easier to scan visually.

However, many of the delimiters (commas, semicolons, parentheses, etc.) are familiar as normal punctuation marks. It is distracting to see them spaced differently in a computer program than in normal text. Therefore, use the same spacing as in text (no spaces before commas and semicolons, no spaces inside parentheses, etc.).

exceptions