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 (1) 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. 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).
The standards in this document are not of themselves required, but individual institutions or groups may adopt part or all of them as a part of program acceptance. It is therefore likely that others at your institution will code in a similar style. 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.
"To be clear is professional; not to be clear is unprofessional." - Sir Ernest Gowers.
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