C Style help requested

[Christopher Lott]

In article <oZ8MU0G00WB70biUAO at andrew.cmu.edu> dg3s+ at andrew.cmu.edu (David Gentzel) writes:
>A friend of mine has been put in charge of coming up with a C (and C++) style
>guide for his company.....


I am told that the Indian Hill Style Guide (sp?) from Bell Laboratories
is not available at any price, etc. to people outside that organization.
I've never seen it, and can't comment.

I can reccommend a document by Gary Perlman of The Ohio State University's
Computer & Information Science Department, titled "C Coding Style & Lore."
I do not think that this paper has been published, and when I last checked,
it was only available from the author in hardcopy form.  It is a terrific
place to start for such a company-wide document. I have it, but it's
difficult to email the hardcopy version :-). Contact Dr. Perlman
at perlman at cis.ohio-state.edu.  
[Disclaimer:  I graduated from OSU and took several of his classes.]  

Then there are the "10 Commandments for C Programmers" which I have;
my version was produced by Henry Spencer.  (also the author?  think so.)

I have saved all of Chris Torek's tutorials that I have seen, all of
which I can pass on.  They are extremely helpful on technical issues; maybe
not so much for style.

And finally I can recommend the GNU C Coding Standard, which I also have.
Perhaps it would be better to request an updated version from the
Free Software Foundation, but I will certainly pass mine on.  I contacted
Len Tower (tower at wheaties.ai.mit.edu).

Another good reference, more general, is _The_Elements_of_Programming_Style_,
by Kernighan and Plaugher.  (Don't quote me on the authors.)

I hope this helps.

chris...
cml at tove.umd.edu    Computer Science Dept, U. Maryland at College Park
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