Ada '83 Quality and Style:

Guidelines for Professional Programmers

SPC-91061-CMC
VERSION 02.01.01
December 1992

SOFTWARE PRODUCTIVITY CONSORTIUM, INC.
SPC Building
2214 Rock Hill Road
Herndon, Virginia 22070

Copyright, Trademarks, Preface, Acknowledgements

In this section...

Copyright Notice
Trademarks
Preface
Authors and Acknowledgements

Copyright Notice

Copyright 1989, 1991,1992 Software Productivity Consortium, Inc., Herndon, Virginia. Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both this copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation, and that the name Software Productivity Consortium not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the guidelines without the specific, written prior permission of the Consortium. Software Productivity Consortium, Inc. makes no representations about the suitability of the guidelines described herein for any purpose and they are provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Trademarks

Ada-ASSURED is a trademark of GrammaTech, Inc.

IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.

VAX is a registered trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Preface

This version of Ada Quality and Style: Guidelines for Professional Programmers was updated under contract to the Department of Defense (DoD) Ada Joint Program Office (AJPO). Considerable effort was placed on improving the coverage of portability and reusability issues, so the majority of changes can be found in those chapters. A new chapter has been included to address performance issues.

The most visible change, however, involves the capitalization issue. The guideline has not changed, but the instantiation now recommends mixed-case identifiers with upper-case abbreviations and lower-case reserved words. Several informal surveys and the general consensus of the reviewers showed strong support for this change.

The Complete Examples chapter includes two new examples which highlight portability and the use of tasking. Each of the examples in this chapter are intended to be compilable and executable.

The Consortium invites comments on this guidebook to continue enhancing its quality and usefulness. We will consider suggestions for current guidelines and areas for future expansion. Examples that highlight particular points are most helpful.

Please direct comments to:

Technology Transfer Division - AQS
Software Productivity Consortium
SPC Building
2214 Rock Hill Road
Herndon, Virginia 22070-4005
(703) 742-7211

DoD activities and Defense contractors can obtain copies of this document through the Defense Technical Information Center:

DTIC
Cameron Station
Alexandria, VA 22314
(703) 274-7633

The general public can order copies through the National Technical Information Service:

NTIS, Commerce Dept.
5285 Port Royal Rd.
Springfield, VA 22161
(703) 487-4650

Electronic copies are available for downloading from the Ada IC Bulletin Board, from AJPO Internet host accounts via the Internet, and from the AdaIC's World Wide Web server.

Authors and Acknowledgements

The editor for this third version of Ada Quality and Style: Guidelines for Professional Programmers is Doug Smith. Kent Johnson managed the update project and the DoD Ada Joint Program Office provided the funding. As part of this update, a panel of distinguished reviewers was chosen from academia, government, and industry. Their contributions and efforts to improve this document are greatly appreciated:

Ms. Christine Braun	GTE Federal Systems
Dr. Charles B. Engle, Jr.	Department of Computer Science Florida Institute of Technology
	Florida Institute of Technology
Dr. Michael B. Feldman	Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science George Washington University
Dr. Robert Firth	Software Engineering Institute Carnegie-Mellon University
Ms. Eileen S. Quann	FASTRAK Training, Inc.
Dr. Charles H. Sampson	Computer Sciences Corporation
Mr. Ed Seidewitz	NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center

Lisa Finneran, Rick Kirk, and Eric Marshall also served as Software Productivity Consortium reviewers. Mike Cochran made the majority of changes to the Concurrency chapter and Alex Blakemore authored or rewrote several guidelines for this version. Lyn Uzzle helped fix the menu-driven interface example. Public comment was invited, and Fred J. Roeber and Bob Crispen provided a considerable amount of suggestions.

Susan Robanos provided technical editing, Debra Morgan provided word processing, and Tina Medina provided clean proofing.

A special thanks to GrammaTech, Inc. who made their Ada-ASSURED product available. All of the examples were formatted in whole or in part using their tool.

This version builds on the success of the authors and contributors to previous versions. The acknowledgements from those efforts are included here.

The authors for the second edition were Kent Johnson, Elisa Simmons, and Fred Stluka. Contributors were Alex Blakemore and Robert Hofkin. Reviewers included Alex Blakemore, Rick Conn, Tim Harrison, Dave Nettles, and Doug Smith. Additional support was provided by Vicki Clatterbuck and Leslie Hubbard.

The following people contributed to an instantiation of the first edition's guidelines: Richard Bechtold, Pete Bloodgood, Shawna Gregory, Tim Powell, Dave Nettles, Kevin Schaan, Doug Smith, and Perry Tsacoumis.

Special thanks are extended to Loral for providing feedback in the form of their Software Productivity Laboratory Ada Standards.

The Consortium would also like to acknowledge those involved in the first edition. The authors were Richard Drake, Samuel Gregory, Margaret Skalko, and Lyn Uzzle. Paul Cohen managed the project. The contributors and reviewers were Mark Dowson, John Knight, Henry Ledgard, and Robert Mathis.

Additional supporters included Bruce Barnes, Alex Blakemore, Terry Bollinger, Charles Brown, Neil Burkhard, William Carlson, Susan Carroll, John Chludzinski, Vicki Clatterbuck, Robert Cohen, Elizabeth Comer, Daniel Cooper, Jorge Diaz-Herrera, Tim Harrison, Robert Hofkin, Allan Jaworski, Edward Jones, John A.N. Lee, Eric Marshall, Charles Mooney, John Moore, Karl Nyberg, Arthur Pyster, Samuel Redwine, Jr., William Riddle, Lisa Smith, Fred Stluka, Kathy Velick, David Weiss, and Howard Yudkin.

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