C code

• The shorter the code, the better. Code is read more often than is written.
• If you can avoid writing code, avoid it.
• Keep it as simple as possible, but not too much. Again, read vs write.
• Read the code. In case of a retch, take a few deep breaths. Continue.
• If there are no comments, it either means the code IS simple, or the code is impossible to understand unless you read a spec. See the top of a file to check if that’s the case.
• Do not put a copy of your license on top of every file. This is awkward.
• Use /* */-style comments instead of C++ style. Use // to comment out parts of code for a quick test.
• Put a link to a spec on top if the code implements it. For god’s sake, compiler can’t read and doesn’t care about your spec copy-pasted into the source code. If your code really needs a copy-pasted spec, it sucks.
• Prefer “magic” numbers with in-place comments (over a stupid enum somewhere) if your code deals with parsing of some complex format. It will be easier to debug such code while looking at the data it tries to parse.
• Try writing self-contained code. It should be easy to use and test it separately.
• Function name and ALL its arguments must start from a new line, ALWAYS just one line. It should be possible to find its definition with grep ^function *.c. Return type should be on the line before.
• Function prototype ALWAYS takes a SINGLE line, so grep function *.h outputs the whole prototype. If it’s too long, you have a different problem.
• While it might look really stupid, prepend each function prototype in the header with extern keyword if it’s gonna be used in a new code, i.e. if it’s “public” in some way. It’s easy to see what global variables and functions the header is exporting then, by simply invoking grep ^extern file.h. Private/internal function prototype can still be written without extern, so that it won’t show up in the output.
• Function should return -1 in case of error, 0 in case of success. Not -2, or -3 unless you declare it in an enum to handle specific errors differently (try to avoid this need).
• Do not expect functions to return -1 in case of error. Either use == 0, != 0 or < 0.
• Always compare to nil/NULL explicitly.
• Learn C operator precedence. Do not overuse parentheses.
• No manual inlining, compiler should do it.
• No #ifdefs/#endifs, code should be self-contained. Consider a separate file with initialization function instead, or a platform-specific implementation, depending on the case.
• No #include in headers.
• No #ifdef/#endif in headers. Include the headers once. See the one above.
• Separate typedef from actual struct and enum, put it at the top of a file. It’s easy to both grep it and read it then. See grep ^typedef file.h.
• Use enum instead of #define if possible.
• No 80-column limit, although try to make it as short as easily readable.
• Initialize a variable near the place it’s gonna be used, not at its declaration.
• Do not use memcpy unless you absolutely sure. Just use memmove.
• Never ever use strcpy, even if you KNOW it fits.
• Never ever use sprintf, even if you KNOW it fits.
• Never ever use alloca.
• Do not expect the stack to grow.
• Do not expect data to fit in a stack-allocated buffer. Use malloc/free if unsure.
• If you have defined main function and there is setlocale on the target OS, call setlocale(LC_ALL, "C") there.
• Expect a crash on any unaligned access.
• Do not (over)use const.
• Learn valgrind. Use it more often.
• Before printing/logging a debug message consider its value. Only important information should be seen. Completely empty output is the best of all.
• Prefer stderr over any kind of logging.
• Do not make assumptions.
• xkcd is always wrong.

Last update: February 04, 2020 11:26PM

anonymous
January 29, 2020 05:59PM

it is 2am in the morning right now, i just found you through searching for xmpp clients written in c on github, when i saw there was an xmpp client written for plan 9. then, what do you know... i see you are developing a DAW for 9front as well. then i see your twitter with synths in your bio, and it links to this site, with this much needed advice. you are my favorite person in the world at this moment in time. thank you for existing and developing such cool things. i stand to learn a lot from them (i am a noob at c (and programming (and life ()))) and you have inspired me to not give up.