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Nearly all of the guidelines mentioned below have many counter-examples in the Hotspot code base. Finding a counterexample is not sufficient justification for new code to follow the counterexample as a precedent, since readers of your code will rightfully expect your code to follow the greater bulk of precedents documented here. For more on counterexamples, see the section at the bottom of this page.

When changing pre-existing code, it is reasonable to adjust it to match these conventions. Exception: If the pre-existing code clearly conforms locally to its own peculiar conventions, it is not worth reformatting the whole thing.

Whitespace

• Indentation levels are two columns.
• There is no hard line length limit.
• Tabs are not allowed in code. Set your editor accordingly. (Emacs: (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil).)
• Use braces around substatements. (Relaxable for extremely simple substatements on the same line.)
• Use good taste to break lines and align corresponding tokens on adjacent lines.
• Use spaces around operators, especially comparisons and assignments. (Relaxable for boolean expressions and high-precedence operators in classic math-style formulas.)
• Put spaces on both sides of control flow keywords if, else, for, switch, etc. * Use extra parentheses in expressions whenever operator precedence seems doubtful. Always use parentheses in shift/mask expressions (<<, &, |, {~}).
• Use more spaces and blank lines between larger constructs, such as classes or function definitions.
• Otherwise, use normal conventions for whitespace in C.

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• Type names and global names are mixed-case (FooBar).
• Local names (fields, variables) and function names are lower-case (foo_bar). (For these, avoid mixing in upper case letters.)
• Constant names in upper-case or mixed-case are tolerated, according to historical necessity.
• Constant names should follow an existing pattern, and must have a distinct appearance from other names in related APIs.
• Class and type names are noun phrases. Consider an "er" suffix for a class that represents an action.
• Getter accessor names are noun phrases, with no "get_" noise word. Boolean getters can also begin with "is_" or "has_".
• Setter accessor names prepend "set_" to the getter name.
• Other method names are verb phrases, as if commands to the receiver.

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