C and C++ Programming Style Guides :: Intelligentedu.com Free Computer Training Blogs

Best New Free Computer IT Training Tutorial Resources

Blog Roll:

- Web Dev - Adobe/MM - MS Office

Top Links:

March 9, 2006

C and C++ Programming Style Guides

For the C and C++ developers, here are several excellent programming style guides and documents to help you code C and C++ in a correct and well-formed style.

C and C++ Programming Style Guides

Original Bell Labs Indian Hill guide with annotations by H. Spencer
15 pages; HTML, PDF, troff
Indian Hill C style guide, as amended at UofT, UW, and elsewhere
28 pages; HTML, PDF, troff
C++ coding rules from Ellemtel (Swedish Telecom) by Mats Henricson and Erik Nyquist.
68 pages; HTML, PDF
This was expanded into a book called Industrial Strength C++ by Mats Henricson and published by Prentice-Hall in 1996. It is no longer in print; but several of the chapters are available at archive.org here.
C++ style guide from Wildfire Communications
About 46 pages; HTML
C++ Coding Standard by Todd Hoff
About 64 pages; HTML
Document about C++ code inspections by J. Baldwin
21 pages; PDF
Notes on programming in C by Rob Pike
5 pages; HTML, PDF
C porting guide by A. Dolenc, A. Lemmke, and D. Keppel
22 pages; HTML, PDF, LaTeX
Ten Commandments for C programmers by Henry Spencer
Original (1 page): HTML, PDF, troff; and annotated (several pages): HTML
Henry Spencer's writings on code stealing, reuse
11 pages; HTML, PDF, troff
A paper about checking for failure codes by Ian Darwin and Geoff Collyer, a paper presented at the January 1985 Usenix conference.
19 pages; HTML, PDF
Words of wisdom from Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer about the appropriate use of #ifdefs, a paper presented at the Summer 1992 Usenix conference.
13 pages; PDF
Tim Ottinger's rules for naming variables and classes.
About 7 pages; HTML
Cstyle document from ESA, Australia
About 9 pages; plain-text
Coding standard from the GNU people as of 10 Feb 89
About 5 pages; plain-text
Some discussions about style documents (from Usenet, 1993)
About 8 pages; plain-text
More discussion about style documents (from Usenet, 1989)
About 6 pages; plain-text
Linux Kernel coding style from Linus Torvalds.
About 5 pages; plain-text
The C Style Guide and Programming Guidelines from The C Kernel pages by Peter van der Vlugt.
About 24 pages; PDF
C++ style advice called "The Tao of Coding" from Koen Witters.
About 12 pages; HTML