C/C++ Style Guide
for Use in Computer Science Courses
at Sonoma State University

The Computer Science Faculty at Sonoma State University is establishing formatting standards for C/C++ programs, written for courses in the department.

• Faculty may establish these guidelines as operative for their courses with a citation in a syllabus, lab, or assignment.
• Individual faculty may set their own standards for programs in their courses, superseding or extending guidelines stated here. Any alternative guidelines will be stated in writing on a syllabus, individual lab, or specific assignment.
• Similarly, individual faculty may or may not require program elements that conform to format required by Doxygen, the "de facto standard tool for generating documentation from [C or] C++ sources." If this standard is followed, faculty may require code submissions to include both the source code and/or documentation files.
• Whatever guidelines are established for a course,
  • points from submitted work may be deducted if the guidelines are not followed, and/or
  • a submission may be returned ungraded for widespread violations of these guidelines.

Doxygen Note

Doxygen, generates both html and Latex documentation from C/C++ programs. "Doxygen is the de facto standard tool for generating documentation from annotated C++ sources, but it also supports other popular programming languages such as C, Objective-C, C#, PHP, Java, Python, IDL (Corba, Microsoft, and UNO/OpenOffice flavors), Fortran, VHDL and to some extent D." For the most part, Doxygen creates materials analogous to Javadocs for the Java language.

Index of Resources

SSU CS Style Guide for C/C++ (version 0.4)

The Doxygen program documentation package

• Doxygen: information, software downloads, user documentation

Doxygen relies upon the software package graphviz for generating impages for calling diagrams, class diagrams, and file dependencies.

• graphviz provides information, software downloads, and user documentation.

The use of Doxygen and graphviz for program documentation is available at Using Doxygen with graphviz—the Basics

Annotated Examples

• C code, written for CS 415
  • fibonacci.c: code to compute the nth Fibonacci number using dynamic programming
    • Annotated code
    • Program file
    • Basic Documentation generated by Doxygen
      • html documentation
        • The tab for "Main Page" gives the title and brief project description entered in Doxygen, when the documentation was generated
        • The "Files" page identifies "fibonacci.c" as the program file. Clicking on tis link provides documentation in some detail for the overall program and for each function,
      • LaTeX documentation (in .pdf format)
    • Documentation generated by Doxygen with Calling Diagrams
      • html documentation
      • LaTeX documentation (in .pdf format)
  • sorting-comparison.c: a program base for timing sorting algorithms
    • Annotated code
    • Program file
    • Basic Documentation generated by Doxygen
      • html documentation
        • The tab for "Main Page" gives the title and brief project description entered in Doxygen, when the documentation was generated
        • The tab for "Data Structures" identifies the "sorts" data type, defined in the program to group a sorting procedure with its name as a character array.
        • The "Files" page identifies "sort-comparisons.c" as the program file. Clicking on this link provides documentation in some detail for the overall program and for each function,
    • LaTeX documentation (in pdf format)
    • Documentation generated by Doxygen with Calling Diagrams
      (See, for example, the calling diagram for the main procedure in Section 4.1.4.8)
      • html documentation
      • LaTeX documentation (in pdf format)

• C++ code for a School Directory of students, faculty and staff

  • Application Design
  • Classes

    Class	Header File	Implementation File	Notes
    Entry	Class Entry.h	Class Entry.cpp	Base class for a directory entry
    Student	Student.h	Student.cpp	Derived class of Entry for a student
    Faculty	Faculty.h	Faculty.cpp	Derived class of Entry of a faculty member
    Staff	Staff.h	Staff.cpp	Derived class of Entry of a staff member
    SchoolDirectory	— — —	SchoolDirectory.cpp	Application: collection of entries
    — — —	— — —	Makefile	Use make for compilation

  • SchoolDirectory package:
    • Compressed file:directory.tgz
    • Instructions for compiling and running README.txt
  • html documentation (with Calling Diagrams)
  • LaTeX documentation (in .pdf format with Diagrams)
    • See, for example, Section 4.1 for an inheritance diagram
    • See, for example, Section 4.1.3.5 for a caller graph
    • See, for example, Section 5.2 for a file reference diagram

created April 29, 2022 revised April 30, 2022 revised July 23, 2022 reorganized August 14-18, 2022 expanded with calling diagrams January 9-12, 2023