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From: newsuser@lth.se (LTH network news server)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Some "guidelines" for coding in C++
Message-ID: <1989Oct21.141916.2611@lth.se>
Date: 21 Oct 89 14:19:16 GMT
References: <1148@aber-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dag@Control.LTH.Se (Dag Bruck)
Organization: Dept. of Automatic Control, Lund Inst. of Technology, Sweden
Lines: 47

In article <1148@aber-cs.UUCP> pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>Always prefix globals with ::, members with this->, static members with name::
>
>	All global identifiers should be prefixed with ::, and all
>	members with this->; this avoids some very hard to catch bugs.

I haven't been bitten by this yet -- on the other hand, I try to write
very simple programs.  I would find all the "::" and "this->" to make
the code less readable, hence more difficult to maintain.

>	Always put the data members first in a class

I find the operations on a class (primarily the member functions) much
more important than the actual data representation; I therefore put all
member functions in front of the data members.  In fact, I have many 
times wanted to hide the data members completely, which unfortunately
is not possible without indirection.

>	If
>	necessary, have two private:, protected: and public: sections, one
>	each for data and procedure members.

This is quite useful.  I normally have the following order:

	1.  Public functions
	2.  Protected functions
	3.  Public data.
	4.  Protected data.
	5.  Private functions.
	6.  Private data.

This discussion is of course much matter of taste -- your's or your
manager's.  Try different approaches!

>	Always specify const in all places where it can be.
>	Always have few, explicit inlines, outside the class definition,
>	always static.

I think these are the most important of Piercarlo's rules.

Dag Michael Bruck
-- 
Department of Automatic Control		Internet:  dag@control.lth.se
Lund Institute of Technology
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