C Primer Plus®, Third Edition

Tips on Making Your Programs Readable

Making your programs readable is good programming practice. A readable program is much easier to understand, and that makes it easier to correct or modify your program. The act of making a program readable also helps clarify your own concept of what the program does.

We've already mentioned two techniques for improving readability: Choose meaningful variable names and use comments. Note that these two techniques complement each other. If you give a variable the name width, you don't need a comment saying that this variable represents a width, but a variable called video_routine_4 begs for an explanation of what video routine 4 does.

Another technique is using blank lines to separate one conceptual section ...