Wow... I didn't mean to hit a nerve.<grin/>

Despite what it appears from your response. I'm in almost total agreement with you. Much of what you appear to disagree with is from my paraphrasing and abbreviating the book. If you get a chance, I highly recommend it.

Most of the coding standards in the book are what most of us describe as good coding practice with a short blurb about why. It then refers you multiple texts for the full discussions about why you need to follow these standards.

As you've described, they talk about consistent formatting (in the item 0) but don't mandate what that formatting is.(The particular style is "unimportant".) If I remember correctly, they may also have mentioned the "style per file" is more important than "style for all code" and to avoid wasting time with reformatting for the sake of reformatting. Or, that may be in one of the books they referenced.