Coding Standards


Maintaining consistency across the web multiverse requires a shared understanding of coding styles. This historical archive captures a 1991 discussion regarding C-code organization and the availability of style guides via anonymous FTP.

[Image of a Usenet newsgroup discussion thread from the early 1990s]
Archive: comp.archives
Date: 5 Aug 1991 | From: Christopher Lott (University of Maryland)

cml@cs.umd.edu (Christopher Lott)
5 Aug 91 03:36:54 GMT
University of Maryland Dept of Computer Science

Newsgroups: comp.archives

In article <blah> aj3u@larch.cs.virginia.edu (Asim Jalis) writes:
>Is there a book out there that gives clues and
>hints on how to organize large projects in C....

I'm not certain whether Mr Jalis wants process guidance or a C-code
style guide. I can offer only the latter: many C style guides
free for the taking. They're available via anonymous ftp from
tut.cis.ohio-state.edu in the pub/style-guide subdirectory.
These documents use either troff or latex formatters, and they're 
biased towards a unix environment.

The happy friendly nameserver tells me the following:
tut.cis.ohio-state.edu has address 128.146.8.60

For those without ftp access, uh, I can be a mail server. Email is 
easy and free (for me). Hardcopy is slow and will cost you hard currency. 

chris...
-- 
Christopher Lott \/ Dept of Comp Sci, Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
cml@cs.umd.edu /\ 4122 AV Williams Bldg 301 405-2721 <standard disclaimers>
                

Legacy Guidance

While modern standards have evolved, these early discussions established the protocols for how developers shared best practices across the nascent internet. Accessing documents via anonymous FTP was the primary method for resource discovery before the widespread adoption of HTTP.