C Style help requested

[R. Vuurboom]

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.  The goals are
>
>    1) Name and comment conventions to enhance comprehension and
>	maintainability on projects with large numbers of programmers.
>    2) Guidelines for writing portable code.
>    3) Common coding mistakes to avoid (and the usual symptoms if they
>	are not avoided).

Maybe there's no need to re-invent the wheel on this one.

For portabilty issues the best book (by far) I've seen on this 
subject is:

Portability and the C language
Rex Jaeschke
Hayden Books (1988)
ISBN-0-672-48428-5

Jaeschke also discusses the impact of the ANSI-C standard which is particularly
interesting for this group and the group next door (comp.std.c).

Another interesting book on portability is:

Portable C and UNIX System Programming
J.E. Lapin
Rabbit Software
Prentice-Hall (1987)
ISBN-0-13-686494-5

This book is aimed specifically at porting code between UNIX and its
derivative systems. It describes a port philosophy, briefly covers
C language issues, and concentrates on the operating system and library
issues.



The best I've seen on coding style standards is something Philips has 
come up with: 

		C Coding Standards (Release 1.1). 
		J.Aerts and J.Langhout
		(1988)
		Order nr: 12NC: 4322 270 50001

Its about 70 pages thick. An (arbitrary)  sample section:

6.2 The use of ++ and --

These operators are very often used in the manipulation of pointers.
Together with the definition of "register pointer" these operators
may result in a saving of both execution time and program space.

The use of "name_p++;" is preferred to "name_p = name_p + 1;" as the
former is more suited for the task of setting  a pointer to the 
next element in of an array.

Do not use "++" and "--" in actual function or macro parameters, e.g:

	call_fn(x++,y++,*x,*y);		/* WRONG */

Avoid the use of "++" and "--" in combination with other operators. Such
may easily lead to mistakes in the expected evaluation order and the
side effects that go with it.


Its not for the C expert (what standard is? :-). But its pretty good 
for the beginner/intermediate C programmer. 
I don't know the price now but last I heard they were selling for all
of 5 bucks. Of course if it has to go overseas and they know you
rich americans are interested ...:-). See telephone nr and address
below if you're still interested. 



	CST Sales,Service and Support
	Centre for Software Technology
	Nederlandse Philips Bedrijven B.V.
	Building HOE 1.15
	P.O. Box 80000
	5600 JA Eindhoven
	The Netherlands

tel nr.	+31 40 743561
	+31 40 744696	
-- 
wiskunde: Dutch for mathematics. Literally: Knowledge of certainty   
wis: certainty			kunde: 	Knowledge
Roelof Vuurboom  SSP/V3   Philips TDS Apeldoorn, The Netherlands   +31 55 432226
domain: roelof at idca.tds.philips.nl             uucp:  ...!mcvax!philapd!roelof