Why is it recommended to have empty line in the end of a source file?

language-agnostic coding-style eof
Petteri H picture Petteri H · Feb 18, 2010 · Viewed 48.3k times · Source

Some code style tools recommend this and I remember seeing some unix command line tools warning about missing empty line.

What is the reasoning for having an extra empty line?

Answer

Ralph M. Rickenbach picture Ralph M. Rickenbach · Feb 18, 2010

Many older tools misbehave if the last line of data in a text file is not terminated with a newline or carriage return / new line combination. They ignore that line as it is terminated with ^Z (eof) instead.

Related questions

Should a function have only one return statement?

Are there good reasons why it's a better practice to have only one return statement in a function? Or is it okay to return from a function as soon as it is logically correct to do so, meaning there may …

Read More
What does 'foo' really mean?

I hope this qualifies as a programming question, as in any programming tutorial, you eventually come across 'foo' in the code examples. (yeah, right?) what does 'foo' really mean? If it is meant to mean nothing, when did it begin …

Read More
Private vs Protected - Visibility Good-Practice Concern

I've been searching and I know the theoretic difference. public - Any class/function may access the method/property. protected - Only this class and any subclasses may access the method/property. private - Only this class may access the …

Read More