Best Practices & Coding Style for C

Consistent style makes code readable and maintainable.

📋 Recommended Style Guidelines

• Naming – snake_case for variables/functions, PascalCase for types.
• Brace placement – K&R or Allman – pick one and stick with it.
• Line length – keep under 80‑100 characters.
• Header guards – #ifndef MY_HEADER_H … #endif.
• Commenting – use /** ... */ for API docs; inline // for explanations.
• Limit globals – prefer passing parameters.
• Always check return values of system calls.
• Prefer size_t for sizes/indices, intptr_t for pointer‑integer casts.
• Use const wherever data won’t change.
• Static analysis (clang‑tidy) and formatting (clang‑format -style=Google).

📚 Example Header Guard & Naming

#ifndef UTILS_MATH_H
#define UTILS_MATH_H

/**
 * Compute the greatest common divisor (Euclidean algorithm).
 */
int gcd(int a, int b);

#endif // UTILS_MATH_H

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🎯 Checklist for Every Commit

1. clang-format -i *.c *.h
2. Run clang-tidy with your project config.
3. Compile with -Wall -Wextra -Werror (treat warnings as errors).
4. Ensure no memory leaks (valgrind).
5. Add or update unit tests if new functionality was added.