Source code that has a common style is easier to read than code that uses different styles in different places. It helps making the code feel like one continuous code base. Easy-to-read is a important property of code and helps make it easier to review when new things are added and it helps debugging code when developers are trying to figure out why things go wrong. A unified style is more important than individual contributors having their own personal tastes satisfied.

Our C code has a few style rules. Most of them are verified and upheld by the lib/checksrc.pl script. Invoked with make checksrc or even by default by the build system when built after ./configure --enable-debug has been used.

It is normally not a problem for anyone to follow the guidelines as you just need to copy the style already used in the source code, and there are no particularly unusual rules in our set of rules.

We also work hard on writing code that is warning-free on all the major platforms and in general on as many platforms as possible. Code that obviously will cause warnings will not be accepted as-is.

Some of the rules that you will not be allowed to break are:

Indentation

We use only spaces for indentation, never TABs. We use two spaces for each new open brace.

Comments

Since we write C89 code, // are not allowed. They were not introduced in the C standard until C99. We use only /* and */ comments:

/* this is a comment */

Long lines

Source code in curl may never be wider than 80 columns. There are two reasons for maintaining this even in the modern era of large and high resolution screens:

1. Narrower columns are easier to read than wide ones. There's a reason newspapers have used columns for decades or centuries.

2. Narrower columns allow developers to more easily view multiple pieces of code next to each other in different windows. I often have two or three source code windows next to each other on the same screen, as well as multiple terminal and debugging windows.

Open brace on the same line

In if/while/do/for expressions, we write the open brace on the same line as the keyword and we then set the closing brace on the same indentation level as the initial keyword. Like this:

if(age < 40) {
  /* clearly a youngster */
}

else on the following line

When adding an else clause to a conditional expression using braces, we add it on a new line after the closing brace. Like this:

if(age < 40) {
  /* clearly a youngster */
}
else {
  /* probably intelligent */
}

No space before parentheses

When writing expressions using if/while/do/for, there shall be no space between the keyword and the open parenthesis. Like this:

while(1) {
  /* loop forever */
}