Coding guidelines

Formatting

Indent by two spaces.

Put spaces around binary operators:

x = y + z;
if (foo == null) {
  ...
}

Opening braces are on the same line as the keyword, and closing braces are on a line by themselves:

if (foo()) {
  bar();
  baz();
}
else {
  baz();
  bar();
}
try {
  foo();
}
catch (FooException e) {
}  

except for do/while, where the closing brace is on the same line as the while.

do {
  foo();
} while (bar);

Don't parenthesize return:

return foo.bar();

One-line if/else/for clauses typically aren't enclosed in braces:

if (foo)
  bar();

(but you can use braces if you prefer).

Java version

Code should take advantage of Java 5 language features such as generics, as well as Java 5 APIs. In particular,

• use HashMap not Hashtable (Hashtable has the overhead of synchronization)
• use ArrayList not Vector (Vector has the overhead of synchronization)
• use Iterator not Enumeration

Originally Jing and Trang were written to use Java 1.1 language features only, and not all code has yet been upgraded.

Subversion

Make sure new files get created with the right properties. In particular, Java files should be created with svn:eol-style=native, so that they get checked out with native line endings on all platforms. You can do this by finding your SVN config file and adding

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes

[auto-props]
*.java = svn:eol-style=native
*.xml = svn:eol-style=native
*.rng = svn:eol-style=native
*.xsl = svn:eol-style=native
*.rnc = svn:eol-style=native

On Windows Vista, my Subversion config file is in C:\Users\jjc\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\config.