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		Linux kernel coding style

This is a short document describing the preferred coding style for the
linux kernel.  Coding style is very personal, and I won't _force_ my
views on anybody, but this is what goes for anything that I have to be
able to maintain, and I'd prefer it for most other things too.  Please
at least consider the points made here.

First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards,
and NOT read it.  Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture.

Anyway, here goes:


	 	Chapter 1: Indentation

Tabs are 8 characters, and thus indentations are also 8 characters.
There are heretic movements that try to make indentations 4 (or even 2!)
characters deep, and that is akin to trying to define the value of PI to
be 3.

Rationale: The whole idea behind indentation is to clearly define where
a block of control starts and ends.  Especially when you've been looking
at your screen for 20 straight hours, you'll find it a lot easier to see
how the indentation works if you have large indentations.

Now, some people will claim that having 8-character indentations makes
the code move too far to the right, and makes it hard to read on a
80-character terminal screen.  The answer to that is that if you need
more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix
your program.

In short, 8-char indents make things easier to read, and have the added
benefit of warning you when you're nesting your functions too deep.
Heed that warning.

The preferred way to ease multiple indentation levels in a switch statement is
to align the "switch" and its subordinate "case" labels in the same column
instead of "double-indenting" the "case" labels.  E.g.:

	switch (suffix) {
	case 'G':
	case 'g':
		mem <<= 30;
		break;
	case 'M':
	case 'm':
		mem <<= 20;
		break;
	case 'K':
	case 'k':
		mem <<= 10;
		/* fall through */
	default:
		break;
	}


Don't put multiple statements on a single line unless you have
something to hide:

	if (condition) do_this;
	  do_something_everytime;

Don't put multiple assignments on a single line either.  Kernel coding style
is super simple.  Avoid tricky expressions.

Outside of comments, documentation and except in Kconfig, spaces are never
used for indentation, and the above example is deliberately broken.

Get a decent editor and don't leave whitespace at the end of lines.


		Chapter 2: Breaking long lines and strings

Coding style is all about readability and maintainability using commonly
available tools.

The limit on the length of lines is 80 columns and this is a strongly
preferred limit.

Statements longer than 80 columns will be broken into sensible chunks.
Descendants are always substantially shorter than the parent and are placed
substantially to the right. The same applies to function headers with a long
argument list. Long strings are as well broken into shorter strings. The
only exception to this is where exceeding 80 columns significantly increases
readability and does not hide information.

void fun(int a, int b, int c)
{
	if (condition)
		printk(KERN_WARNING "Warning this is a long printk with "
						"3 parameters a: %u b: %u "
						"c: %u \n", a, b, c);
	else
		next_statement;
}

		Chapter 3: Placing Braces and Spaces

The other issue that always comes up in C styling is the placement of
braces.  Unlike the indent size, there are few technical reasons to
choose one placement strategy over the other, but the preferred way, as
shown to us by the prophets Kernighan and Ritchie, is to put the opening
brace last on the line, and put the closing brace first, thusly:

	if (x is true) {
		we do y
	}

This applies to all non-function statement blocks (if, switch, for,
while, do).  E.g.:

	switch (action) {
	case KOBJ_ADD:
		return "add";
	case KOBJ_REMOVE:
		return "remove";
	case KOBJ_CHANGE:
		return "change";
	default:
		return NULL;
	}

However, there is one special case, namely functions: they have the
opening brace at the beginning of the next line, thus:

	int function(int x)
	{
		body of function
	}

Heretic people all over the world have claimed that this inconsistency
is ...  well ...  inconsistent, but all right-thinking people know that
(a) K&R are _right_ and (b) K&R are right.  Besides, functions are
special anyway (you can't nest them in C).

Note that the closing brace is empty on a line of its own, _except_ in
the cases where it is followed by a continuation of the same statement,
ie a "while" in a do-statement or an "else" in an if-statement, like
this:

	do {
		body of do-loop
	} while (condition);

and

	if (x == y) {
		..
	} else if (x > y) {
		...
	} else {
		....
	}

Rationale: K&R.

Also, note that this brace-placement also minimizes the number of empty
(or almost empty) lines, without any loss of readability.  Thus, as the
supply of new-lines on your screen is not a renewable resource (think
25-line terminal screens here), you have more empty lines to put
comments on.

Do not unnecessarily use braces where a single statement will do.

if (condition)
	action();

This does not apply if one branch of a conditional statement is a single
statement. Use braces in both branches.

if (condition) {
	do_this();
	do_that();
} else {
	otherwise();
}

		3.1:  Spaces

Linux kernel style for use of spaces depends (mostly) on
function-versus-keyword usage.  Use a space after (most) keywords.  The
notable exceptions are sizeof, typeof, alignof, and __attribute__, which look
somewhat like functions (and are usually used with parentheses in Linux,
although they are not required in the language, as in: "sizeof info" after
"struct fileinfo info;" is declared).

So use a space after these keywords:
	if, switch, case, for, do, while
but not with sizeof, typeof, alignof, or __attribute__.  E.g.,
	s = sizeof(struct file);

Do not add spaces around (inside) parenthesized expressions.  This example is
*bad*:

	s = sizeof( struct file );

When declaring pointer data or a function that returns a pointer type, the
preferred use of '*' is adjacent to the data name or function name and not
adjacent to the type name.  Examples:

	char *linux_banner;
	unsigned long long memparse(char *ptr, char **retptr);
	char *match_strdup(substring_t *s);

Use one space around (on each side of) most binary and ternary operators,
such as any of these:

	=  +  -  <  >  *  /  %  |  &  ^  <=  >=  ==  !=  ?  :

but no space after unary operators:
	&  *  +  -  ~  !  sizeof  typeof  alignof  __attribute__  defined

no space before the postfix increment & decrement unary operators:
	++  --

no space after the prefix increment & decrement unary operators:
	++  --

and no space around the '.' and "->" structure member operators.