Team Excellence - oop344 20113 Code Standards

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Code Standards

Fardad suggested in class today that we make a document that defines the format that our code is presented in so I've made this page to outline them.

The sections that follow are just ones that I could think of. If you know of other things feel free to add them

If Statement

if (condition){
  stuff;
}
else if (condition){
  stuff;
}
else {
  stuff;
}

Notice the space between the 'if' and '(' and the lack of a space between the ')' and '{'. Also the 'else' starts a line under the '}'.

If the "stuff" is only one line the curly braces can be omitted.

Dzmitry: I have a proposal. How about doing it like this:

if (condition){	
    stuff;
}else if (condition){
    stuff;
}else{
    stuff;
}

That will save a few lines, also space between "stuff" and beginning of the line should be default Visual Studio Tab (Mine is 4 spaces).

For Loop

for (i=0; condition; i++){
  stuff;
}

Notice the space after the 'for' and the lack of space between the ')' and '{'

Similar deal as with the if statement if "stuff" is only one like the curly braces can be omitted.

While Loop

while (true){
  stuff;
}

Notice the space after the 'while' and the lack of space after the ')' and '{'.

Also the curly braces can be omitted if "stuff" is only one line.

Function Declarations

void foo(int a){
  stuff;
}

The function header isn't indented at all and the first line follows immediately after with one indent.

Also there's no space between the ')' and '{'.

Indents

I think each indent should be the equivalent of two spaces. You can change the settings of Visual Studio to put in 2 spaces whenever you press tab. This will keep the code properly aligned and if someone isn't used to using tab for indent they can easily just use two spaces.

Dzmitry: I think at least 3-4 spaces will be better. First of all, it makes code easier to read (less characters on a page) and original console.cpp (at least for me) is written with 4 spaces spacing, so we won't need to change professor's code.

Class Member Variables

I think we should follow Fardad's lead and start all of our class' member variable names with an underscore '_' to differentiate them from other variables.

Comments

Dzmitry: We have two choices:

// this comment is an example
int foo(int x);

OR

int foo(int x);   // this comment is an example

I prefer the second one, because I got used to it, but I think that the second one is more affective, and it is the best choice, to put comments on the top line.

File Header

At the start of your files put a comment that defines the file and and declares when it was last updated and by whom

/**
*   test.cpp
*   Sandip Patel  
*   October 12, 2011
**/