This document
is a modified version of a document from
a committee formed at AT&T's Indian Hill labs to establish
a common set of coding standards and recommendations for the
Indian Hill community.
The scope of this work is C coding style.
Good style should encourage consistent layout, improve
portability, and reduce errors.
This work does not cover functional organization, or general
issues such as the use of
gotos.
We
have tried to combine previous work [1,6,8] on C style into a uniform
set of standards that should be appropriate for any project using C,
although parts are biased towards particular systems.
The opinions in this document
do not reflect the opinions of all authors.
Please reflect comments and suggestions to
the last author.
Of necessity, these standards cannot cover all situations.
Experience and informed judgement count for much.
Programmers who encounter unusual situations should
consult either
experienced C programmers or code written by experienced C
programmers (preferably following these rules).
Ultimately, the goal of these standards is to increase portability, reduce maintenance, and above all improve clarity.
Many of the style choices here are somewhat arbitrary. Mixed coding style is harder to maintain than bad coding style. When changing existing code it is better to conform to the style (indentation, spacing, commenting, naming conventions) of the existing code than it is to blindly follow this document. This is particularly relevant when coding Microsoft Windows programs which depend on the Microsoft style of declarations and coding.
``To be clear is professional; not to be clear is unprofessional.'' - Sir Ernest Gowers.