CIT 590 Style Rules
Spring 2009, David Matuszek

Names

• Variables start with a lowercase letter and are in camelCase.
• Class and interface names start with a capital letter and are in CamelCase.
• Constants (final variables) are written with ALL_CAPITALS_AND_UNDERSCORES.

Indentation

• An open brace, {, always goes at the end of a line of code.
• Anything within braces is indented four spaces.
• Any statement controlled by another statement is indented four spaces.
• A close brace, }, lines up with the first character of the line containing the matching open brace.
• Example:

  for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
      System.out.println(i);
  }

• Do not use tab characters! (Any good editor will have an option to replace tabs with spaces.)
• Lines should not be more than 72 characters long. If you need to continue a statement on the next line, indent it--there are no good rules for how much to indent, so do what you think looks best.

Spaces

Put a single space:

• Before and after any binary operator except "dot": + - * / % = && || and several others.
• After commas, colons, and semicolons (except at the end of a line).
• Between a keyword and an open parenthesis (for example, while ( ).
• Before an open brace, {.

Do not put a space:

• On either side of a dot.
• Between a method name and its parameter list (example: scanner.nextInt(6) ).
• Immediately inside parentheses (example: do not write 2 + ( 3 * y ) ).
• Before a comma, colon, or semicolon.

Semantic:

• Don't write "clever" code--make it as readable as you can.
• Keep computations and input/output in separate methods.
• Names should be meaningful (exception: indices of for loops should be i, j, k).
• Avoid magic numbers--give them meaningful variable names.
• Do not use abbreviations (unless common and well known, such as max for maximum).
• Keep methods short enough to see the entire method at once (about 50 lines at most).