Coding-style Guidelines Motivations

• The public, protected and private keywords must be used explicitly in the class declaration in order to make easier code readability.
• English and self-explaining names for constants, variables and functions should be used for code readability. Possibly avoid the use of underscore "_" characters within variables or function names (ex. theTotalEnergy, SetEnergyTable(), GetTrackPosition(), ...).
• The code must be properly indented (ex. 2 characters indentation when inside a control structure) for readability reasons.
• Each GEANT4 class name should begin with G4 (ex. G4Particle, G4GeometryManager, G4ProcessVector, ...) to keep an homogeneous naming style for GEANT4 specific classes.
• Each header file should contain only one or related class declarations. For maintainability reasons and to make easier retrieval of classes' definitions across each category.
• Each class implementation source code should go into a single source file. For maintainability reasons and to make easier retrieval of classes' implementations across each category.
• Each header file must be protected from multiple inclusions in order to avoid multiple declarations and circular dependences in the code. Ex.:
  #ifndef NAME_HH
  #define NAME_HH
  ...
  #endif
• Each file should contain a short header about the author, updates (CVS) and date.
  All files should begin with:
  // $Id: motivations_coding_style.shtml,v 1.1 2006/05/16 06:20:58 gcosmo Exp $
  and a half line comment with the name of the original author, update notes and dates.
  The $Id: motivations_coding_style.shtml,v 1.1 2006/05/16 06:20:58 gcosmo Exp $ expands to filename and last updater in CVS.