Software Engineers Handbook/Supporting Processes/Coding Standards

From Wikibooks, open books for an open world

This page may need to be reviewed for quality.

Jump to: navigation, search

Here is the wikipedia entry for coding standards.

Coding standards generally contain a set of conventions for a specific language. Items typically covered are:

Naming conventions including:
- how descriptive and long the names should be,
- what the capitalization scheme should be, and
- what the postfix and prefix conventions are.
Physical organization, such as Definitions shall be located in the header files. and Do not include more than one class in one file.
Structure conventions, such as Opening and closing braces shall be located in the same column like this:

{
    {
        // code in here
    }
}

Style guides, such as Classes containing pointers shall have a virtual destructor. It is useful to include the reasoning and references for this type of standard.
Legacy code guidance, such as When editing existing code, follow the coding naming and structure conventions of the existing code.

[edit] C++

www.possibility.com coding standard
www.chris-lott.org standard
Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs by Scott Meyers (ISBN 0321334876) is a reference for creating style guides.
More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs by Scott Meyers (ISBN 020163371X) is a reference for creating style guides.

"Always, always, always use good, unabbreviated, correctly-spelled meaningful names." -- Wiki: MeaningfulName

Popular naming conventions (naming formats) include: