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From: jhritz@cfpas.UUCP (John Hritz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: documentation standards for C
Message-ID: <217@cfpas.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Oct-87 13:14:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: cfpas.217
Posted: Fri Oct  2 13:14:17 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Oct-87 06:15:29 EDT
References: <9500@brl-adm.ARPA> <343@taux01.UUCP> <9232@slate.BBN.COM>
Reply-To: jhritz@cfpas.UUCP (John Hritz)
Distribution: world
Organization: Chrysler FPAS, Southfield, MI
Lines: 36
Summary: C Standards have little to do with brace placement

In article <9232@slate.BBN.COM> mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) writes:
>
>The things we really did have to specify included rules about relying on long
>symbol names (don't), byte or word ordering (don't, or at least provide
>ifdefs for all reasonable cases), or Rieser preprocessor tricks (don't),
>including structured comments at the beginning of source files and functions
>(which allow us to use trivial tools like grep to build indexes of what
>functions are defined in a source file, etc.), conventions for preventing
>multiple inclusion of .h files, and so on.

Standards that we adhere to include not relying on whether the machine
does hardware or software sign extension, encouraging the writing of
modularized code, keeping the scope of variables as restrictive as
possible, and managing project and system wide header files with an iron
fist.

Sign extension becomes a problem when performing right shifts on signed
operands.  If your system uses software to perform this function, you
will get unreliable results.

The benefits of modular code have been long argued.  Here we maintain
that the cost of calling more functions is paid back in ease of
algorythm substitution.  The construction and extension of a local
function library cuts down on development time.

The misuse of scope in variable declarations is also a common failing in
large systems.  We prefer to collect all functions requiring a
pathological linkage in one file and making the variable static to the
file rather than making global linkages.

Many of the standards adopted by our groups are discussed in detail in
the book, "C Programming Guidelines" by Thomas Plum.

-- 
UUCP: ihnp4!mibte!cfpas!jhritz (John Hritz)  "Do photons have mass?...
VOICE: 313-351-3404                               Are any of them Catholic?"