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Introduction

In this document, will the discuss the more basic standards and suggestions for C++ development. The conventions of Plum and Saks will be used for terminology ¹; a standard is a rule which is nearly always followed, and a guideline is a recommendation. Wherever possible, a coding example will be provided to clarify the current discussion, and a justification will be given for all standards and guidelines.

This is intended as a living document, and as such all of its contents are open to discussion and debate. Additions can be added if it can be successfully argued that they will help the maintainability, understandability, or reusability of AIPS++ software, or sections can be removed it can be argued that their benefits do not significantly increase the quality of AIPS++ software. It is very important to maintain a minimal set of standards to avoid a overwhelming barrage of rules which could result in the standards not being followed.

There will be two documents which will accompany this document. One will describe the format for source code documentation and the tool(s) for extracting the documentation and creating texinfo files or man pages. Perhaps, at some point, the coding standards and documentation standards will be combined, but for now they will be separate. The second will describe the exception mechanisms which will be used for signaling and handling errors.

There are several other sources of information utilized in creating this document. Meyers book on effective C++ programming proved useful ², but many of the points which this book makes is also in the ``C++ Programming Guidelines''. However, the ``C++ Programming Guidelines'' is much more terse. The ARM ³ was also used. Since the ARM is the ANSI draft standard for C++, it is the last word when questions arise, and it also contains interesting commentary on language features.