C Coding Standard
Revision as of 07:13, 18 August 2009 by Alexander Kogtenkov (Talk | contribs) (→Language consideration: Added a note on function prototypes without arguments)
Language consideration
- Avoid using assignment inside an expression.
- Never use goto.
- Never use return if this is not the last instruction of a routine.
- Use break only to separate branches of a switch statement.
- A declaration
extern void foo();
- needs to be
extern void foo(void);
- Otherwise it is not considered a prototype (for compatability with K&R) (see bug#13870).
Style
- Always use curly braces, even when there is only one instruction. Instead of
if (a) do_something();
write
if (a) { do_something(); }
- Place opening brace at the same line as the condition as in
while (expr) { ... } for (;;) { ... }
unless the expression is very long as in
if (very_long_expression) { ... }
- Surround else with braces as in
if (expr) { ... } else { ... }