Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool: Function Definitions

| ### 9.1.4 Function Definitions As a stylistic convention, the return types for all function definitions should be on a separate line. The main reason for this is that it makes it very easy to find the functions in source file, by looking for a single identifier at the start of a line followed by an open parenthesis:
    $ egrep '^[_a-zA-Z][_a-zA-Z0-9]*[ \t]*\(' error.c
    set_program_name (const char *path)
    error (int exit_status, const char *mode, const char *message)
    sic_warning (const char *message)
    sic_error (const char *message)
    sic_fatal (const char *message)
There are emacs lisp functions and various code analysis tools, such as `ansi2knr` (see section 9.1.6 K&R Compilers), which rely on this formatting convention, too. Even if you don't use those tools yourself, your fellow developers might like to, so it is a good convention to adopt.

This document was generated by Gary V. Vaughan on February, 8 2006 using texi2html