GNU Coding Standards

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2023-08-01 20:00:03

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Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

The GNU Coding Standards were written by Richard Stallman and other GNU Project volunteers. Their purpose is to make the GNU system clean, consistent, and easy to install. This document can also be read as a guide to writing portable, robust and reliable programs. It focuses on programs written in C, but many of the rules and principles are useful even if you write in another programming language. The rules often state reasons for writing in a certain way.

If you did not obtain this file directly from the GNU project and recently, please check for a newer version. You can get the GNU Coding Standards from the GNU web server in many different formats, including the Texinfo source, PDF, HTML, DVI, plain text, and more, at: https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/.